Monday, June 16, 2008
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Friday, June 13, 2008
Monday, June 2, 2008
Giant Leopard Moth
A few weeks back I found a large black woolly caterpillar walking along the edge of the sidewalk near my office. I picked it up and it coiled into a circle and exposed bright red bands that had been hidden between rings of black bristles. Pretty impressive! I showed it to my daughters but none of us knew what it was.
Fresh out of field containers, I scavenged a paper cup with a wad of napkins for a temporary home. It worked long enough to get us home and inside but somewhere between the kitchen and the family room we set the cup down long enough to lose track of this black beauty. Open screen-less windows and backdoor make it pretty easy for quasi-pets to escape so after a cursory search I presumed she was settling into a cocoon in and amongst the great outdoors.
This morning there was a nasty storm - the kind of wind & rain that makes weathermen break into regular programming to give us the blow by blow. Our regularly sun-filled family room was dim with stormy purple-green light. The kids were camped out in the bathroom with our dog, Buster. He'd taken refuge in the shower, refusing to be coaxed out for even with warm-from-the-oven-sugar-cookies.
Anxious and grabbing up odds and ends on the off chance we decided to head to the spacious safety of our crawl space, I weighed my shoe options. My rubber boots were by the back door in the darkened family room. Something bright caught my eye. Suddenly it registered that there was a large bright white moth on the back of one of my black rubber boots. Storm-be-damned I got a jar, hastily stuffed in some climbing sticks, and gently nudged the impressive moth into the make shift habitat.
It was 3 or 4 inches long with white fuzzy antenna and black circles & shapes on it's robust iridescent white wings, thorax, & head. There were watery yellow-green droplets on either side of it's head. None of the Willow folks had ever seen anything like it. There was nothing like it in our guide to the butterflies & moths of North America. While it rained and hailed, we focused on finding the name of this pretty guest.
I scrolled through several Google screens of white moths with black circles. Some of them were close. Some of them weren't even moths. Finally between the field guide and online info, I narrowed it down to a Giant Leopard Moth. The description of their black and red caterpillars brought back a recollection of our long lost black beauty.
Giant Leopard Moths
Clear sky was on the horizon just as we solved 3 mysteries - what was the caterpillar, where did it go, and what kind of moth was this. Ready for some puddle jumping, we pulled on our rubber boots and we Willows headed out to straighten our wind-blown yard.
-Willow Mom
Fresh out of field containers, I scavenged a paper cup with a wad of napkins for a temporary home. It worked long enough to get us home and inside but somewhere between the kitchen and the family room we set the cup down long enough to lose track of this black beauty. Open screen-less windows and backdoor make it pretty easy for quasi-pets to escape so after a cursory search I presumed she was settling into a cocoon in and amongst the great outdoors.
This morning there was a nasty storm - the kind of wind & rain that makes weathermen break into regular programming to give us the blow by blow. Our regularly sun-filled family room was dim with stormy purple-green light. The kids were camped out in the bathroom with our dog, Buster. He'd taken refuge in the shower, refusing to be coaxed out for even with warm-from-the-oven-sugar-cookies.
Anxious and grabbing up odds and ends on the off chance we decided to head to the spacious safety of our crawl space, I weighed my shoe options. My rubber boots were by the back door in the darkened family room. Something bright caught my eye. Suddenly it registered that there was a large bright white moth on the back of one of my black rubber boots. Storm-be-damned I got a jar, hastily stuffed in some climbing sticks, and gently nudged the impressive moth into the make shift habitat.
It was 3 or 4 inches long with white fuzzy antenna and black circles & shapes on it's robust iridescent white wings, thorax, & head. There were watery yellow-green droplets on either side of it's head. None of the Willow folks had ever seen anything like it. There was nothing like it in our guide to the butterflies & moths of North America. While it rained and hailed, we focused on finding the name of this pretty guest.
I scrolled through several Google screens of white moths with black circles. Some of them were close. Some of them weren't even moths. Finally between the field guide and online info, I narrowed it down to a Giant Leopard Moth. The description of their black and red caterpillars brought back a recollection of our long lost black beauty.
Giant Leopard Moths
Clear sky was on the horizon just as we solved 3 mysteries - what was the caterpillar, where did it go, and what kind of moth was this. Ready for some puddle jumping, we pulled on our rubber boots and we Willows headed out to straighten our wind-blown yard.
-Willow Mom
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