Wavy Sphynx

Saturday my bf and I went out to admire our tomatoes. I'm not always there, so I am lucky to get to see them once a week. He's not always there, either, and his mom is the one who normally turns on the soaker hose for a while each day.

While looking at the tomatoes in the raised beds, we were noticing the plant that has always looked a little drier than the others, with the leaves a bit curled up and almost crispy looking, had some rather yellow small tomatoes on it This led to some debate because we had some little tags in there telling us which plant was which, but they are now buried beneath a bunch of straw and tomato leaves, so we don't really know how big the tomatoes should be or what color they will ultimately be.

While examining this plant, we noticed it also had a few even smaller green tomatoes that looked half eaten. My eyes followed a trail of them up and...my heart stopped and I just froze. There was a big-ass, huge, gigantic caterpillar munching on the next tomato up. My heart started beating super fast and my mind was racing...were there more of them? Are there a hundred of them all over the plant and they just blend in and we didn't notice? We brushed by a branch on the side of the bed, was there one on there? IS IT ON ME NOW??? Am I about to bump into another one? The thing was HUGE.

My bf was facing me and mostly away from the plant, so he didn't see what I was looking at, only my reaction as I grabbed his shoulders to use him as a sort of human shield. "What? What is it?" he said. I made a little motion with my head in the direction of the 4+ inch caterpillar and at first he didn't see it, but he was looking for a big bug or something and not a green caterpillar. That's because it's the same reaction he would have had if it'd been a big bug or a spider. When he saw it, he started laughing at me. I guess that's for all the times he's seen an itsy bitsy spider and panicked and I laughed at him.

We didn't see any more of these things, and we weren't sure what to do other than go around the tomato bed the OTHER direction on the way back to the house so we didn't brush into that one low outstretched branch JUST IN CASE.

I was saying we should find a big jar and put it in there with the branch it was on and the tomatoes it had been eating and then give it to one of his customers who had said to us once if we ever found a caterpillar in our garden, please save it in a jar for her along with some of whatever we find it eating. I think my bf wanted to cut off the branch and throw it into the neighbors yard (like they're not going to know where the big tomato branch came from when our tomatoes stick up about 7-8 feet in the air!) but he was amenable to saving it for his customer if we could figure out what to put it in.

We made dinner, which was sort of a practice for Thanksgiving. Last year I made a whole vegetarian dinner for his family on T-day and I was amazed that he let me do that, but it was a rather over-ambitious menu that included a fake turkey that wasn't very tasty and was still cold in the middle when we served, and this time we want to make sure things are both simpler and tastier, so I was previewing this loaf thing that is filled with soysage stuffing that they sell at Whole Foods for him, with some Punk Rock Chickpea Gravy from Vegan With A Vengeance while he made mashed potatoes for the first time ever I think with no butter or even Earth Balance in them.

His mom wandered in so we used her as our Thanksgiving guinea pig offered her some dinner and then were telling her about the HUGE GINORMOUS caterpillar on the tomatoes. She kind of shivered. She said she doesn't want to water the tomatoes for us any more. She thought we should kill it (she also wanted to kill the first ladybug we ever saw in the garden.) Then she wanted to see it. So, it was dark by this time but we went out with a flashlight, a scissors and a bucket. My bf had the scissors and the bucket and his mom had the flashlight. I had a glass of wine and was trying to keep far away from the plant, but my bf needed someone to hold the bucket.

Sooo...I took the flashlight from my bf's mom so she could hold the bucket for him. She didn't want to hold the bucket, so she tried to take the flashlight back from me. That was quite futile because I have a very strong grip and she is rather small and frail and sick. I know, I know...I should have been "nice" and let her have the flashlight but heck, she was the one who wanted to go out in the dark and poke around looking for the darn thing anyway! I didn't even want to go back outside, and I for sure didn't sign up to hold the bucket!

The branch got cut, went into the bucket, and another tomato that had been gnawed on already went in there. Then we took it inside and looked at it in the kitchen light. It is actually quite pretty for a big scary squishy thing with a horn on it and a giant face/mouth aperture that gnaws on our tomatoes. We put a thin flour sack towel over the bucket and fastened it on tightly!

My bf was convinced this thing must have arrived in the vermiculture that contained the earthworms we added to our garden a few months ago. That was a disconcerting thought...what exactly did we have shipped to us....and what state did it come from exactly??? Later when I was home, I thought I would try to look this creature up in "Peterson Field Guides Western Butterflies". That book doesn't show caterpillars for all of its butterflies, however, and it doesn't show any moths.

Finally I remembered that I live in the 21st century and I went to my computer and googled "caterpillar identification" and found a site that helped me figure out that this is probably a Wavy Sphynx, which will turn into a Sphynx moth and they don't normally eat tomato plants, they like the leaves from a few different trees and they like lilac bushes. So, just in case there are any more there, I ordered my bf a lilac bush. Next time, if he finds one on the tomato plants he can just throw the big, giant, creepy, squishy green monster thingy on the lilac.