A few weeks ago I caught a Luna moth. And then a few days later I caught another one! And BOTH of these moths laid a batch of eggs before passing away. I pinned, spread, and preserved each of these little pretties and left their eggs on a tissue.
The eggs were laid in little clumps and stuck fast to the tissue. BUT, as you may have noticed, several of the eggs are, in fact, EMPTY in this photo. To my HORROR the first bunch of eggs hatched sooner than I had anticipated. Unfortunately, I only found about half of those caterpillars. So, I put them in a jar. I also un-stuck the rest of the unhatched eggs and placed them in the jar.
After a few days the rest of the eggs hatched. I gave them a piece of lettuce, but they hardly touched it. Once I discovered, by reading my book on Coleoptera (moths and butterflies), that Luna Moth Larvae eat only pecan and walnut leaves I marched out to my front yard and picked some young pecan leaves to feed to my little crawlies.
After a few days the rest of the eggs hatched. I gave them a piece of lettuce, but they hardly touched it. Once I discovered, by reading my book on Coleoptera (moths and butterflies), that Luna Moth Larvae eat only pecan and walnut leaves I marched out to my front yard and picked some young pecan leaves to feed to my little crawlies.
As you can see, the caterpillars have been eating with quite an appetite! It is a little hard to see the caterpillar in this picture. It is about 0.7centimeters long. This seems very tiny, but the day before yesterday they were only about 0.4 centimeters long. These little ones have newly doubled in size in the last two days! I can't wait to see how well they do in the next few weeks. They should end up being about 2 inches long before they are ready for metamorphosis. I'll update as they grow.
