Caution: Crazy looking critter
You all remember our Tomatosphere project, right? The one where we planted tomato seeds that had been exposed to space. Well, the other day I thought we’d picked up an alien life form, along with the seeds.
At first, I didn’t know what the heck was leaving tiny little poop pellets all over my deck. I thought it might be a rabbit, because that’s kinda what they looked like. But no, on closer inspection I found this:
Check out how much of that green tomato he has munched on!! This guy is about four inches long with a little stinger on his back end… at least I think it’s his back end…. kinda hard to tell.
Anyway, I came in and GB and I looked him up on the computer….. hmmm, should we look under crazy critter? No, let’s try large caterpillar. After doing an image search on Google, we came up with this site. And yup, that’s our creature; a Tomato Hornworm. Yuck! I’m no farmer. I have grown tomatoes before… BUT… never seen one of these suckers.
My picture is kind of fuzzy, so this is him…. See that crazy stinger thing on his hind end!!
This is what it will look like after it morphs into a moth.
I’ll bet Superboy, over at Lapaz Farm has already encountered this critter in his study of moths. But to tell you the honest truth… he freaks me out.
I don’t know….. should I try to keep him long enough to see him morph? I don’t know if I have enough tomato leaves… he is a little piggy! He halfway decimated my plant before I found him. He camouflages quite well, you know. Well, we’ll see. Maybe I will. GB sure wants to. And it WOULD be a good learning process. ….
I tell you, this kid gets me involved in all kinds of things that made me uncomfortable before he came around…LOL! It’s a learning process for both of us. 
I say go for it! Worst that can happen is he dies and stops eating up your tomatoes, right?
Comment by
lapazfarm — August 31, 2007 @ 6:22 pm
Ewww…. I hate tomato worms! I’m fine with most bugs, I can even find the good in spiders… but I “euthanize” tomato worms as soon as I find them. Anything that looks like that, AND ruins my tomato crop is on my hit list! (Although he might make a nice cocoon…)
Comment by
woodstone — August 31, 2007 @ 8:28 pm
I’m so happy that I actually knew what it was before you “told” us!
I had come across another horned caterpillar awhile back: http://alexml.blogspot.com/2006/10/fat-horned-caterpillar.html
I regretted letting him go and not watching his transformation, so I’d say, hold onto him! By the way, my caterpillar would have actually dug a whole to do his metamorphosis! So, you might do some reading… (I think he’s beautiful, but I know he’s a pest!)
Comment by Dana — August 31, 2007 @ 8:58 pm
A very cool - though destructive - little critter!
Comment by
tribeofautodidacts — September 1, 2007 @ 2:18 pm
We found 5 tomato hornworms this year and “gave” them one of my tomato plants to chew on. We keep moving them from the good plants onto “their” plant. They do eat a lot! I think they are very cool though. We kept one last year and then it disappeared. We dug through the soil and found the pupae of it and kept it in a container until it hatched out. It makes a huge pupae and a huge moth. Very cool!
Comment by Jennifer E — September 1, 2007 @ 5:56 pm