Well now. If you remember,
way back in August B and W found a big, juicy, green caterpillar/worm thing in the park. They brought it home and it was just starting to make a cocoon. We named it "Heimlich" after the character in "A Bugs Life" - because it looked just like him. It was semi-attached to a couple of twigs and leaves and we put it in one of our old fish tanks. It was out of the way on a bookshelf in W's room. It moved furiously one day in November and I thought that was it. Now it's dead. It just had a seizure or epileptic fit from not being in the park where it's supposed to be. The cocoon was white and hard and never moved again. But we left it alone, just in case.
Today, all of a sudden, I hear some weird, fast fluttering and lo and behold - there's this huge, brown moth in the fish tank. No, I mean HUGE. With closed wings it's the size of my palm. It is NOT a luna moth. It looks more like a female polyphemus moth. These do not eat - and they live only 1 week. In that time they must find a mate, lay eggs, and die. Poor thing.
I can't let it go yet (there's about 2 feet of snow outside today). I put some sugar water on a cotton ball for her, but what do we do now? Anyone?
2 comments:
I have no idea! But HOW NEAT!
We found a damaged Luna and kept it alive for awhile with the sugar water but since then I've discovered Luna and Butterfly blogs that can be a lot more helpful. I just googled what to feed a Luna and How to keep a Luna moth and checked in some of the sites.
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