11319At work today, one of my kids runs up to me and says “Miss Hedder, a cadderpiwwar!” Normally, this is uneventful. I stroll over, pick up the caterpillar and fling it far away enough not to get squashed by overzealous two year olds. This time of year we’re thick with them, they’re literally jumping out of the trees (they’re Orange Striped Oakworms, which pupate underground overwinter). The kids usually smash at least three or four a day that I just don’t get to in time. Anyway, I stroll over expecting to find a longish black thing and instead find a HUGE green thing. I mean, this caterpillar was 4 inches long and an inch fat. It was the biggest caterpillar I have ever seen in my life. I picked it up on a twig because I wasn’t sure if it was poisonous or not, then showed it to some of the other kids before taking it away to a safer spot. I had my camera with me, so I got a picture of it so I could find out what kind of moth it would be. I know butterfly caterpillars don’t look like that, so I thought it might be a Luna Moth, but it turns out that it’s a Polyphemus Moth. It was neat to look at!
3 Comments
You should keep one of them and put it in the jar for the kids to watch it evolve..
PS: Miss Hedder, cute name *grins*
It overwinters by wrapping itself in a leaf. The kids would stare at it for 3-4 months while it did nothing.
I may let them see a Monarch caterpillar hatch, but that would have to be next year.
[...] Cocooned! Back at the end of September, I blogged about finding a giant green catterpillar at work. It turned out to be a Polyphemus Moth, one of the biggest moths here. We’ve been having a lot of storms as of late here, with a lot of wind. It’s been blowing a lot of branches and leaves out of the trees around work. Well, a few day ago, I found what looked like an empty cocoon. The outside looked whole, but it was too light to have anything inside. I tossed it by the fence, curious to see if anything came out eventually. The day after that, I found another, blown down by another storm. This one, was quite heavy. I tossed it beside the first one, figuring whatever was in it was long dead. Yesterday, i found a third one, blown down again. I finally said to hell with it and took this one home. I did a little research and found that it’s the cocoon of the green catterpillar! It will hatch a lovely Polyphemus Moth in May! I hung it outside so it can hatch in May. I’ll go back on Monday and pick up the other two, as well as any others I can find. Views(1) [...]