Are you familiar with this moth?
Well, not this moth, but this kind of moth?
It’s called a white-lined sphinx moth. Let me tell you about my first run in with this moth (well, not this moth) years and years ago: It was long ago when the hostas were small and I was flushed with the new-home-owner happiness of having our own yard with trees and plants and sunshine and air – *sigh*.
I was out on the patio and saw a darling hummingbird sipping nectar from the blossoms. Wanting to further commune with nature, I got very close to it. I noticed that something was wrong with that adorable tiny bird – it’s widdle beak was broken! It would back away from the flower and it’s beak would drop, so I leaned closer and holy fake-out, that is NOT A HUMMINGBIRD!!!!! GAHHHHHHH!!!!!
I never communed with nature again. You just can’t trust it.
My grandpa called that a Tomato Moth, because their larval form eats tomato plants (among other things). He would send us out into the garden with fly swatters and tell us to whack them.
So this is what those big green nasty worms that have devoured many of my tomato plants turn into? EWWWW. We used to pay our boys 25 cents for each tomato worm that they killed. Those things are evil.
Ack! I don’t like it either. It looks like a giant flying roach!
(Yikes…I’m a big fat hypocrite. I just recently tried to save a luna moth…until I found out it doesn’t have a mouth, so there could be no saving…but anyway, I too would run from this thing. Why? Because of how it looks?)
http://splicd.com/kfXu9V9ggoU/416/522