One of the highlights of Summer 2020 so far has been finding Jim.
We were walking around the yard and Amalia spotted this thing that looked like an egg! After a quick Google reverse-image search, we figured out it was a moth pupae.
We named it Jim, and put it somewhere safe to check on every day.
We checked. every. day.
There were times we thought Jim was dead, other times we could see him wiggle, but surely it can’t take this long to pupate?
What is really interesting is that the caterpillar does not actually grow into a moth per say; it goes through a process called histolysis. There is a special group of transformative cells which remain, dormant, inactive, and unseen during the pupal stage of a caterpillar’s life. These cells break the caterpillar down until it is nothing more than a pile of cells, more or less an accumulation of goop. Now it is ready to reform itself into a moth.
From pestwiki.com (#)
So amazing!
After what seemed like an eternity (almost a month), Jim hatched and was free. We were very happy for him and hope he comes back to visit one day.
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