Meet Kermit

[plumtreeblossom]

Over the weekend I discovered this impressive green fellow on one of my cherry tomato plants, contentedly devouring an unripe tomato:



I don't know how long he's been in my garden. Before the blight when the plants had green leaves, he would have camouflaged perfectly among the green leaves, and it's a sure thing that he wasn't always this huge, so it would have been easy for him to hide until the blight turned the leaves brown. It's possible that his egg hatched in the plant, even, or maybe he managed to climb all the way up three stories to my balcony. And those gnawed tomatoes that I blamed on squirrels two weeks back? Probably him.

Web research indicated that he is a caterpillar of the Great Ash Sphinx Moth. AKA "tomato bug," so says cathijosephine. But by that time, after having checked the he was a lone visitor and not part of an invasion, I had already bonded with him (the gender is arbitrarily assigned; I actually have no clue), and beowabbit and I had named him Kermit (cuz it isn't easy being green!).

Here's a picture (taken by beowabbit) with my hand and a lighter for scale:



As you might expect from his size, the adult Great Ash Sphinx can have a wingspan of up to 5 inches -- that's wider than my hand. I know I've never seen one, and I think I would wet my pants if I saw a moth that big and didn't know what it was. Maybe they migrate somewhere.

So, I seem to have a short-term pet that will one day be a dragon-bat thing straight out of Cabin In The Woods. He has crawled all over the tomatoes on that plant and his doody is on some of them, so I made the executive decision that I won't be eating that plant's fruit. He can just have them. Once he's cleaned off the plant, I'm going to have to repatriate him to the wild so he doesn't move on to my other plants (I need to get some work gloves for that -- I doubt the thorn-like spike on his tail is for decoration).

You probably don't have any other friends who name their garden vermin and sacrifice their heirloom cherry tomatoes to them. But he's fascinating to watch, and I am who I am.

Comments

[thesynergizer.livejournal.com]

this is a cute story :-)

i might keep a caterpillar for a pet so my kids can watch the cocoon/chrysalis transfermation thing in person, but letting it eat my tomatoes? well, maybe ;-)

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I had hoped he would make a chrysalis that we could see, but it turns out this variety of caterpillar need to burrow underground, and then spend all winter below the frost line turning into a moth. So I'll need to get this guy to a ground-level place that has a food source. I know where some wild grapes are growing. I might take him there. :-)

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

Oh, cool. I mean, condolences on the loss of your tomatoes, but what a neat critter.

[heatherp8.livejournal.com]

wow, what a groovy visitor!
Too bad he doesn't do the whole chrysalis thing but you're an awesome human for even considering taking him to a place where he can make his transformation.
Good Karma, that.

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

Kermit is beautiful! He is a green tomato hornworm and he will grow even larger before he goes into crysalis. Next year he will be a Hawk Hummingbird moth, one that feeds by day on nectar from flowers and lays its eggs among the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. These little fellows never bothered my tomatoes as such. They just fed on the foliage, and not too much of that, since they appeared rather late in the season. I never bothered them and they really never bothered me. The moth is a glorious sight to behold. I thought it was a hummingbird because it was a daytime moth of many beautiful colors, it hovered over the flower and the whirring of its wings made a humming sound. Upon closer inspection I noticed that it had no beak, but rather a long proboscis like a butterfly. So I went to the local library, told the librarian what I had seen and she got down a book with a pciture of my garden visitor. It was she who told me about the beautiful green tomato hornworms that are the larvae for this lovely moth. What amazes me about your Kermit is that he is in the city. The only place I ever saw them in my gardens was way up in New Hampshire.

[muffyjo]

Oh what a handsome fellow! I hear "the hornworm feeds on tomato plants and their relatives (other nightshades of the Solanaceae family; including peppers, tomatillos, eggplants, tobacco and the like) "

The same site says "The best method of control is to handpick these caterpillars from garden plants manually (don’t worry about that menacing-looking horn – this bug looks tough but it’s all coward in the end)"

Of course, if you want the tomatoes they are a menace, but he does look quite remarkable.

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

I put a picture of the moth on my page, along with some facts about the Hummingbird moth.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_mattt/]

Despite the fact that I am terrified of caterpillars (yes, this is true -- I have a real phobia and could barely look at the pictures), I think this is a very sweet story.

There's a type of wasp that preys on them, so make sure you remove any little white eggs laid on him (I had tomatoes when I lived in Somerville).

[heliopsis.livejournal.com]

There was a beautiful and disturbing exhibit at Mass MOCA several years ago in which Kermit's relatives were prominently featured. It was a series of gorgeous, enormous photographs showing creatures like the hornworm eating and being eaten. I have a book of the images I can show you some time.

[fitfool.livejournal.com]

ugh that's a frighteningly big caterpillar