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Metamorphosis
The beautiful life cycle of a Giant Leopard Moth
One day, back when we lived in Florida, I came home to a critter carrier sitting on our kitchen counter. The universal sign in our household that we have a new pet.
Our new pet was a giant leopard moth caterpillar (I thought it was a woolly worm, if you know, you know).
My husband had put some kale in its cage, but after a couple days it seemed clear that it wasn’t interested. A quick Google search taught us that they enjoy eating the leaves of several types of plants including, magnolias, sunflowers, honeysuckles, and citrus.
Fortunately, we had three orange trees outside of our town house (they were planted before we moved in, and never flowered).
My husband cut the thorns off of the stems and placed several in its cage. Within a few seconds it began eating at a rapid pace.
Suddenly, the leaf was gone, and it moved onto another in less than an hour. Apparently, they stuff themselves prior to forming their cocoon in late spring.
A few days after gorging itself on citrus leaves, it crawled to the top of the cage and began to spin some kind of silk web to attach itself there.
