Fuzzies

I never considered myself as much of a girl. I grew up mainly with my father and prefered to play in the dirt as opposed to playing with dolls. But i realize today that i'm either more of a girl than i originally thought or just a complete wuss b/c some bugs frighten the crap out of me. case in point: fuzzy black caterpillar...


i go outside to check on the plants today and go to walk down my concrete stairs and bam, there he is. there's a fuzzy black thing all curled up in a ball. What a caterpillar is doing on my concrete steps, i donno. At first i'm curious b/c you know, he's fuzzy and all. and that quickly turns to oh my god, he's fuzzy, ah! and cringing. I don't know exactly what i was thinking, but i got his little fuzzy self into a styrofoam cup. What i planned to do with him i donno but he intrigued me partly b/c of how he looked and partly b/c he kinda freaked me out. maybe it was a challenge on my part to attempt to not be freaked out as much. so go to find out what the little bugger is and find hims...that is exactly what the little guy looks like.

Turns out he's the larvae stage of a giant leopard moth. I was hoping he would be something cool like a butterfly but it turns out the leopard moth is actually really pretty in a huge catlike moth kinda way.
    It's very sad too b/c while i had him in the cup i heard this scraping noise and a shiver ran down my spine. Little guy was moving in the cup. Sooo very creepy.
   So i decided that he looked pretty cool after metamorphosis and i need to learn to not be so freaked out by him so i said, ok buddy, you're mine for the raising now. I don't know, maybe it's divine intervention that he wound up all helpless on my front steps, maybe this was supposed to happen....haha, no. But he was awful helpless just laying there and maybe he's super stupid and needs my help. Although if he's that stupid and wouldn't survive by himself maybe i'm hurting the gene pool more than i'm helping... thats a whole other touchy subject tho.
     So i got a big plastic container you store large cakes in and filled the bottom with fallen leaves, a few branched sticks and went and picked fresh green leave from a few different plants hoping he (or she) would find one of them tasty for the muching :) I was so jumpy too when i was outside! the wind was blowing and when things fell on the roof or around me on the ground i would jump a little bit. i cursed myself every time for being such a ninny. you know how when you walk thru a spider web you sit there and brush yourself forever thinking that the damned arachnid is on you somewhere? that was the feeling.


and here he is as an adult:

all the images are from wiki, check him out. His little caterpillar spines cause irritation and rashes so even tho he's furry i can't pet him :)


the insanely scary part is that it's said that he likes to burrow under leaf mulch so now that he's in the container he buried himself and i can't see him at all. i keep telling myself  niki, he can't escape, he's no Houdini. I even checked the whole container for caterpillar clearance holes (even the bottom: paranoid? me?). There's none but i can't help but still be slightly paranoid...