Would you believe, the
fat green caterpillar (apparently it's an Antheraea polyphemus) we found on our sidewalk...our very own Hermie, decided to give us a nature study! Ruby came to me the morning after we adopted him and said, "mom, he's all gone!" I had visions of squished caterpillar guts on our basement floor, but when I picked up the jar, it was obvious Hermie had made a big chrysalis on the sweet potato vine in his jar. Matt thinks he went to "a happy place" to avoid any more manhandling, but I'm hopeful he'll come back to us as a winged creature someday soon. I'm off to google "how to raise a silk moth". Pretty exciting!
Wonderful!
ReplyDeleteOne year, after finding the first caterpillar(Daniel)in Oct and watching it cocoon shortly after, i was getting ready to throw it away in May when it hadn't transformed yet.
Thankfully i didn't. Tullaia went outside and shouted to me. Apparently Daniel was actually Daniella. She was out of her cocoon in the butterfly cage and there were 5 or 6 males hovering around.
They can "smell" the female pheromones from miles away. They had mated through the mesh and she laid eggs all over the front porch. We were able to continue the cycle several times.
Oh my, just writing this makes me feel so excited.
Yay!
http://maravillastl.blogspot.com/2010/09/polyphemus-memory.html
ReplyDeleteI am a nerd. Here are some pictures.
Ruby told me today that she had a green caterpillar...now I know what she was talking about!
ReplyDelete