This morning Peter was met with sounds of sporadic screaming noises from the backyard. Turned out it was the sound of me battling THE LARGEST caterpillar I have ever seen in my life! I was trimming the tomato plant and as I snipped away some branches, low and behold, there he was. Green, spotted, and right in the middle of breakfast. I once told a friend that giant crazy scary bugs that one imagines to only live in places like the Amazon jungle actually reside right here in KS! This was one of them. See it above my finger? He was about as thick as my pinky finger and maybe a little longer.
I went in to tell the kids to come out knowing that they would LOVE to see it. Andrew's first comment was, "I would never eat that!" Good to know. The next thought was to capture it and keep it until it became a moth or butterfly. The kids have been asking to make bug habitats all summer and now we had the perfect specimen to make one for. So he grabbed an old strawberry container and I proceeded to capture the caterpillar. He put up quite the fight and that's where the screams came from. I had a pair of chopsticks and was trying to pull him off the branch but he was not about to give up. He gripped that branch with all his might and every time I'd try to grab him with the chopsticks he would quickly attack the chopstick and try to bite it! That's where the screaming came in. Every time he'd attack my chopstick I would start screaming. Andrew said, "Mom, calm down!" Matthew and Emery were giggling watching their mom duke it out with a bug. And Peter is laughing his head off watching from the bedroom window. In the end, I did manage to prevail. We now have a pet caterpillar that will hopefully make for a neat science experiment in the weeks to come.
This is also another creature that is common here that I HATE. I don't know what it called but it is REALLY noisy at night and they molt throughout the season leaving their disgusting carcasses around the yard. This picture does not do justice to how creepy this thing is.
I went in to tell the kids to come out knowing that they would LOVE to see it. Andrew's first comment was, "I would never eat that!" Good to know. The next thought was to capture it and keep it until it became a moth or butterfly. The kids have been asking to make bug habitats all summer and now we had the perfect specimen to make one for. So he grabbed an old strawberry container and I proceeded to capture the caterpillar. He put up quite the fight and that's where the screams came from. I had a pair of chopsticks and was trying to pull him off the branch but he was not about to give up. He gripped that branch with all his might and every time I'd try to grab him with the chopsticks he would quickly attack the chopstick and try to bite it! That's where the screaming came in. Every time he'd attack my chopstick I would start screaming. Andrew said, "Mom, calm down!" Matthew and Emery were giggling watching their mom duke it out with a bug. And Peter is laughing his head off watching from the bedroom window. In the end, I did manage to prevail. We now have a pet caterpillar that will hopefully make for a neat science experiment in the weeks to come.
This is also another creature that is common here that I HATE. I don't know what it called but it is REALLY noisy at night and they molt throughout the season leaving their disgusting carcasses around the yard. This picture does not do justice to how creepy this thing is.
No comments:
Post a Comment