With a little help from google, I found out that it's a caterpillar called a Tobacco Hornworm (often confused with the Tomato Hornworm). Both caterpillars like to feed on tomato and pepper plants. Having wasps around helps eliminate these caterpillars by laying it's larvae inside of the caterpillars, therefore killing it when the larvae grows. Weird. Jason started collecting them off of the tomato plants and "doing away with them." Today I found several more, but can't kill them! I don't know why! The one pictured above, I put into a glass jar so Jack and I could learn about him. I just found the jar outside and the poor caterpillar was still alive and skinny skinny! So, I threw the other ones I found in with him...along with some of the leaves...and he's EATING like crazy! So, we were starving him to death. Uggghhh! Poor guy! So, maybe I'll just save the caterpillars in a bug cage, feed them...and we'll see them turn into the ugly moths they become. Then release them away from our house. I'm such a sucker! I guess the good news is, when I found the other caterpillars this afternoon, there were a couple of wasps flying around our tomato plants! Isn't nature interesting!?!
No comments:
Post a Comment