The Devil in My Refrigerator

 No, the devil in my fridge is not Whit's Frozen Custard, though that stuff is temptingly close. It's a honkin' big worm! Read on...

By September 6, 2022, the hickory horned devil was walking nonstop. In nature it would be seeking soft soil it could dig down into to shed its skin and pupate.  It was time to bring the caterpillar into the house, and give it a medium it could burrow in and pupate safely. I received detailed instruction from Tami on the proper substrate. Apparently putting the caterpillar in potting soil can cause issues when perlite and peat get lodged in the exoskeleton, so clean long-fiber sphagnum is the medium of choice. I dampened it a bit with water. The caterpillar made circuits around the big plastic footlocker, tunneling through the medium. 

It had shrunken from nearly 6" to only  4, and it would continue to shrink.

Once the caterpillar starts to walk, it does little else, pausing only to curl up and sleep, and probably dream (spiders have been proven to dream, so why not devils?), then resuming its ceaseless circuit of the bin. I don't know how much ground they must cover in nature, but it's probably considerable.

Here, I briefly lift it,  then it continues to walk. 

The caterpillar was undergoing big changes inside as it walked. 

It was shrinking more and more each day. 

Yes, this is the caterpillar that once spanned my entire hand end to end. 

Here's a  photo from Tami Gingrich that highlights the size change in devils who are ready to pupate. She's gone out and plucked some examples from her mystical caterpillar farm in northern Ohio. The huge green ones are still eating,  as evidenced by the leafy twigs they're on, and the little turquoise curled ones are ready to pupate. Isn't that crazy?

Finally, the caterpillar lay still. It was time to transfer it to the plastic lunch meat container that would be its home until sometime next summer.

I could hardly believe this was the same caterpillar! A quarter for size comparison. 

The shrinking happened because it was losing water weight, and there were little droplets all over it as if it were condensing moisture, like a cold glass of ice water.  In fact, it was excreting moisture through its skin, soaking the paper towels it rested in! I kept changing them, as if it had wet its bed. It let off a strong and characteristic acrid chemical smell, which perhaps would help to protect it from being eaten, if the prickly horns and fearsome size didn't work.  It certainly didn't smell like something I'd want to eat. Even when it pupated, it kept this chemical smell. 

Here you can see the droplets it's exuding. It's going wee from every pore.

ln this photo from Sept. 11, you can see that its fabulous silk-stockinged prolegs are now just empty socklets, bits of skin. This caterpillar couldn't go anywhere now if it wanted to. Again, I wondered what it feels like to metamorphose. Does it hurt? Is it awful? Or is it like a dream state? 

The whole animal is dissolving, changing, contracting.

 Tami told me to watch for the caterpillar to turn from turquoise to olive, which would indicate it was ready to shed. This didn't happen until September 11. It seemed as good a way as any to observe Bill's and my wedding anniversary--watching a caterpillar get ready to shed its skin.  I knew the change would come soon. I hoped it wouldn't happen while I slept! 

I am pretty proud of this next video, and thankful that Tami gave me the information I needed to set myself up to catch it. On the 12th of September, 2022, the caterpillar was nearly motionless and unresponsive, as one would be with one's insides turning to goo. I set up a time-lapse with my old iPhone 6 and captured the process of shedding the caterpillar skin so the new soft pupa can emerge. Note how you can see the huge black false eyespots become part of the pupa!

Some still photos from the shedding process:

When the shedding process was complete and the pupa had darkened to mahogany brown, becoming  hard-shelled, Tami instructed me to close the pupa in its plastic sandwich container, lying on clean paper towels, and put it in the cool basement. Then, when the weather finally turned cold, I was to put it in the refrigerator. And from November to mid-May, there it would stay. Once a month, I would check on it, put two drops of water on the paper towels, and put it back in the fridge. I know I checked on it more often than that. I didn't want to forget there was a miracle going on in my basement refrigerator.

The whole process seemed so bizarre to me, so apart from nature, and I was a little uncomfortable with keeping this magnificent beast in mesh netting, albeit outdoors on a live tree; and then in a footlocker; and then in a Hillshire Farms sliced ham container. I was afraid I'd mess up somewhere along the way and doom it. At the same time, I knew I was locking it away from any number of predators and parasitic wasps and flies. I had been chosen by Fate to be the keeper of this precious gem. This was to be my quest. I had taken the insect in on August 8, when its sibling was eaten by a bird,  and I realized this one would probably die, too, unless I did something. Kept fed and safe within a mesh sleeve on my persimmon tree until September 6; watched as it walked until it pupated on September 12...then stored in my basement fridge until mid May  2023... I felt so privileged to be able to witness the caterpillar's entire life cycle and even participate in it. One caterpillar--what a gift it was; nearly a whole year of watching and waiting.

And the reason I've waited to tell you what happened with the caterpillar is because I needed to know how it all worked out. I didn't want to have you fall in love with this magnificent creature, only to have to tell you it ended up as a puddle of goo in my refrigerator, oops, sorry, got you all worked up for nothing. I waited to see her through. Blogging about the life of something like this is like being a press agent to a large green and blue tubular celebrity, and I take that responsibility seriously. 

Next: we wait eight months, and hope eight months. But you won't have to wait that long.

Devil on the Move

The ironweed was in bloom, and a Pleasing Picture-winged Ant Lion paused for its portrait on September 5, 2022. Fairies exist! If you ever see one fly, you'll believe it. These insects fly like they're doing it for the first time, suspended half-vertically, beating those lovely pictured wings madly...they look like someone impersonating a dragonfly, and doing it very badly. Oh they are so special! 

 If it kind of snaps your neck to go back nearly a year to September 2022, it does that to me, too. But now I have to tell  you the rest of the story of the hickory horned devil I protected in the summer of 2022.  I can't say I raised it; the persimmon tree did that; I just covered it with a huge fine mesh sleeve to keep the braconid wasps and tachinid flies from parasitizing it. Here it is, in situ, with the sleeve open for photography. You'll have to click on the photo to see it very well.

The caterpillar was undergoing some dramatic color changes as it grew, and grew, and grew. 

Let's have a close look at the amazing gripperdoodle at the stern of this beast.

It reminded me of a silicone potholder, the way it folded over the twig and fastened with something akin to Velcro, ensuring the massive caterpillar would not fall to its death. 

My caterpillar guru Tami Gingrich told me that when it turned color to a pale and vibrant turquoise, it would begin the wandering phase, and indeed it did, ceasing to eat and walking all over its enclosure. This is the stage at which most people find hickory horned devils walking around, looking for a place to dig into the earth. I was bemused to see one make the newspapers that same month. I can't think of anything more newsworthy than seeing this creature gallumphing down a sidewalk.

Figuring it was at its largest and heaviest, and knowing it would eat no more, I weighed it to see where it topped out, on September 5, 2022.

It's about 22 gm, almost an ounce. 

Let's put that in perspective. 

It weighs as much as a fat adult big brown bat (22 gm)! 

Almost twice as much as a chipping sparrow (12gm)! 

More than a junco, or an orchard oriole (both 19 gm)!

You get the idea. It's a Very Large Caterpillar.

But it is soon to become something entirely other.