I was out watering my herb garden the other day when I noticed some strange looking caterpillars chilling amongst my rather pathetic parsley. I dumped some water on them, hoping they would be knocked off or would seek shelter elsewhere, but they just stayed there without moving an inch. They did however sprout some weird little yellow horns though whenever the water hit them. Hmmm...I wasn't about to try and remove something with my bare hands that had retractable horns and was brightly colored. If I remembered anything from Wild America, brightly colored things are generally best left alone. So it was off to the interwebs to see if I could figure out just what exactly was making itself so comfortable in my garden.
Turns out they are all black swallowtail caterpillars, also known as the parsley caterpillar...appropriate, eh? They're apparently in the stage right before they they overwinter as chrysalis, which means in the spring I'll be greeted by these eye-catching guys:
Not too bad, as far as weird bug infestations go.
No comments:
Post a Comment