My first post to this blog....

So, I set up this blog to kind of play around with formatting and now I have decided to use it for more personal stuff and things that are going on or what I am thinking......

The other morning, my kids got up and found a huge moth stuck to our sliding glass door's screen. My son decided that the moth had been there long enough and before I could see what all the fuss was about, he grabbed his sister's shoe and tossed it up at the screen to knock the moth off. Luckily, he missed and I was able to see this lovely creature.

It is a Polyphemus moth and his wing span was 5 1/2 inches across. I let both of my older kids hold him (and I say him because of his large antennae that the male has....this one definately had them). Interesting facts about the Polyphemus moth:

1. They only live for a week
2. They really don't have any mouths and so they don't eat...they only live off what the stored up when they were caterpillars.
3. As caterpillars, they can eat 86,000 times their weight at emergence in a little less than two months.
4. It has a distraction pattern on its wings to protect it from predators.....see the spots on the lower wings....they are meant to resemble owls eyes.

This is the first one I have ever come across......well alive anyway....when I was in high school, some kids had them in their bug collections for science class. Have you ever seen one alive in person??