Along about late May 2023, when it finally warmed up nicely, I went down to the basement and fetched the little plastic tub labeled HICKORY HORNED DEVIL SEPT 12 2023. I'd been periodically taking a sniff and gently squeezing the pupa, weighing it in my hand, to make sure it was still good and alive and ready to go. Yep, it still smelled like acrid chemicals, but without a hint of corruption.
I buried it about 3" deep in moist potting soil in a heavy ceramic pot, and put that pot in a mesh laundry hamper, the same kind I use for my bats. (You can get them at Walmart for about $10. Make sure the whole thing zips closed.) I put the hamper, with the heavy pot inside to weight it down, on my mouse- and chipmunk-proof plant table up against the north side of the house. There, it would get natural ambient temperatures, frequent watering, and the safety it needed to finish its metamorphosis.
Hickory horned devil pupa on the left, imperial moth pupa on the right. I'm still waiting on the imperial moth to eclose! This was taken maybe four days before the devil dug its way out of the soil. I could see the pupal shell pulling away from the insect inside. I knew it would be soon!
I would wait, and wait. Tami's moths would all emerge and fly, and mine, many miles further south, still stayed a pupa. She warned me that it might be planning to go another year before emerging, but I had a good feeling about this. I usually don't see royal walnut moths before my birthday, which is July 24. A bad sample, admittedly because my friend Laura has come the last few years on my birthday to set up moth sheets, and we always get royal walnut moths on the sheets! I never see them otherwise.
On July 27, I walked out of the front door, checking the hamper as I had every durn morning since late May, and I saw this. THIS!!
On the outside, two wild royal walnut moths, mating. On the inside, my splendid huge female, finally emerged!!!
but wait, there was more. Liam looked down and found this:
and then I poked around and found this (and this is a pair hooked together, as well)
and this--another pair, but fresher than the former.
In total, FOUR MATING PAIRS of royal walnut moths had been attracted to the immediate vicinity of her hamper by the powerful pheromones of the one female I'd raised. Tami Gingrich, who has years upon years of experience raising gobs of this species and many others, said, "I've never seen that! I'm coming down to YOUR place!"
I guess we have a lot of royal walnut moths in Washington County! Or that was ONE SEXY GIRL I raised!
And she is. Oh, she is. Don't you love the color scheme of bright cinnabar, charcoal, and cream? As if the turquoise, emerald, orange and black caterpillar hadn't been enough.
As if to cheer on the royal walnut moth orgy, each of my Creole Lady trees put out a twin pair of flowers that morning. Yeah Yeah Yeah! Go Moths!
Now I had to wait until nightfall to let a male moth in with my freshly emerged female. I did not want to disturb the clasped-together pairs of moths, but I worried about them. They were on the nasty, well-worn Chipmunk Highway that runs beneath my chipmunk-proof table, and it looked like they planned to stay there. I knew if I tried to pick them up they might break apart before fertilization took place.
Sure enough, a couple hours later, I found this poor live moth and the wings of its mate. Thanks, chipmunk. Have I told you lately that I hate you?
I gathered up the remaining moths, all of which seemed to have uncoupled, and put them in the hamper for the rest of the day, for safekeeping, atop the glass table. They aren't interested in mating until the female begins to "call" by emitting a pheromone after dark.
I got a fascinating look at what that crazy gripperdoodle on the back end becomes!
Just look at the furry claspers on this male!
Looking closely, there are also some sort of scary hard dark keratinaceous clasperclaws beside the soft furry bits. Yikes.
I got you, ain't gonna let you go. Unless, you know, a chipmunk comes between us.
I was planning to drive to Indiana on the morning of July 28. But my moth guru Tami Gingrich told me that, to catch the best action from the moths, I should get up at 3 AM the morning of my trip, because they don't really get going until that witching hour. "I'm up with my moths every night this time of year," she said, as if that were the most natural thing in the world. (I LOVE this woman!)
Well, OK, I said, I'm usually awake then anyway, for weird hormonal/psychological/cavewoman reasons beyond my ken. Unbroken hours of sleep? I dimly remember it. Sure enough, I woke up and looked at my clock. It said 2:53 AM, so I dragged myself out of bed, and went out with a flashlight to see what was happening. Sorry I'm so incoherent in this video, but nothing could have prepared me for the ruckus going on out there.
I could hear the clatter of their wings as I came up the stairs. Lordy dordy, those males wanted my female.
Nice to see the life force running so strong in these creatures. There were at least four, three clustered right next to her, and a fourth careening wildly just outside the hamper. And these moths were all brand new, fresh, unlike the heavily worn eight from the night before. All told, over two nights, my newly eclosed female had drawn a DOZEN other royal walnut moths out of the forest on my sanctuary. I was absolutely floored.
After my foggy brain was done taking it all in, I decided to catch two males and zip them up in the cage with my big female. That way, if one was a dud, the other would come through.
I caught two, did that, marveled for a few more minutes at the absolute frenzy of it all, and went back to bed.
In the morning, it looked like one was coupling with my lady; another was hanging out, and two were still plastered to the outside of the hamper.
Whoops, they aren't coupled. Female, with giant abdomen, male with claspers, behind.
Hmm. Now what? I leave for Indiana this morning...I consulted Tami, and she advised that Liam should open the cage and release all three at dusk that evening. That worked for me. If they didn't want to mate in the cage, my magic lady was more than capable of bringing in a male to mate in a place of their choosing.
Happily, Liam said that later that morning, the two were hooked together. Hooray! They stayed that way until well after he opened the hamper that evening. And they were all gone the next morning.
I loved how Tami described the female moth as "calling" when she put her abdomen in the air. Calling with chemicals, she was.
Yoo hooo!
And a very close look showed two white pearly eggs that had escaped her. These giant silkmoths, described by one of my college professors as "gonads with wings," are all about reproduction. They don't even have operable mouthparts. They don't eat as adults. All they want to do is mate.
Oh, that. Yep, I remember that. It can get you in a lot of trouble, that life force; it can put you on the chipmunk highway, wings clipped, all chewed to bits.
But look at the eggs.
So ends the story of the hickory horned devil who was a GIRL all along, and underwent a stunning transformation into Miss Yvonne, the Most Beautiful Woman in Puppetland.
She's out there somewhere, probably having dropped her load of eggs on a persimmon or a hickory or a black walnut. I've got all of those.
I went crazy for this one caterpillar. I documented every step of its colorful, constantly changing life. And it's taken me three entire days to put together four posts about the experience, and I don't even know how many days to put together last summer's posts. But I know that, though I summoned the energy to document and share this creature's development as best I could, I don't have it in me to become a real Crazy Caterpillar Lady. Raising them by the dozen, running the sleeves and gathering the food--I know what that's like, because I did it with a schtun of monarch caterpillars in 2022. It's WORK.
I love that there are people who do that all summer long. I know and deeply respect several. Let's see... I'm counting...I personally know FIVE Crazy Caterpillar Ladies, which goes to show you that I am attracted to people of passion, like a moth to the whiff of pheromone on the moonlit breeze. My friends are witches. They are tuned in to the beat of life in the day and in the night. This is the pageant going on all around us; this is the miracle going on in our woods and fields. If you've never seen it, haven't thought about it, now at least you know it is happening.
And the more you know, the more you want to know.
My deepest thanks to Tami Gingrich for guiding me gently, every step of the way. She had a real greenhorn on her hands and she couldn't have been kinder or more helpful. She told me I was a good caterpillar mom!
I can't say what I'd do if I found a little prickly hickory horned devil now, in August of 2023. I have a feeling I'd sleeve it, just to protect it from the birds, just to be able to peek in on it. And yes, I'd put it in my fridge for the winter, and make it a hamper in the spring. Because I catch myself peering up into the persimmons on my morning rounds, thinking about August 11, 2022 when my friend Heather F (another one who's tuned in) looked up into a low-sweeping persimmon branch and asked, "Well, what's THIS?" and started this whole devilish ball rolling.
Well, would you look at the calendar...it's about that time.
The twin flowers on my Creole Ladies turned violet and yellow, and rolled up closed that evening.
And the moths were flying free.
Magic, it is, to know they're out there, beating five-inch wingspans, seeking each other out, clattering against the leaves in their hurry to mate and leave more, ever more.
Long may the Royal Walnut Air Force fly.
0 comments:
Post a Comment