Beauty and Beast

I was sitting in the garden yesterday morning, admiring all the new flowers blooming, when I noticed my fuchsia bush looked a little puny. I gazed through the twiggy center, wondering where all the leaves had gone, and discovered this guy:

My first inclination was to snip off the twig he was chowing down on and throw it over the wall with him on it. He could take his picnic someplace else. Instead I waited to show him to my bug-loving son, who promptly stuck him in a jar and named him Vlad.

He's been wanting to keep a caterpillar through metamorphosis. Although Vlad has a face only a caterpillar mother could love (or find, for that matter), I ended up spending a good part of Mother's Day morning trying to find out who Vlad's relatives are.

I was rooting for one of the pretty swallowtail butterflies we sometimes see in the garden. Their larvae look similar, but minus the tail spike. It's hard to see in the picture - and it's hard to tell which end is which - that's the tail on the left.

We think Vlad is a white-lined sphinx moth. We find them resting by our front door, and flitting around the back yard. They're fun to watch in flight because they look just like mini hummingbirds.

When Vlad makes it to the hummingbird moth stage, he's welcome to hang out in our back yard all he likes. I just wish his kind would lay their eggs elsewhere.