The Very Hungry Hornworm

Here is my cherry tomato plant about 3 weeks ago, just when it was starting to wake up after the horrible long hot summer.

And here is my cherry tomato plant this morning, after hornworms ate almost all the leaves. (If you look closely at the left side of the first photo, you'll see it was already starting to happen.)

Sometimes my ignorance -- or poor memory -- or poor thinking skills -- choose one of the above -- amazes me. I noticed that the leaves were gone from some of the branches and did I conclude from that that we had hornworms? NOOOOO, I concluded that the leaves were falling off the plant because -- well, I didn't really know why. Nor did I know why these "fallen" leaves weren't lying on the ground anywhere. It took the absence of almost every leaf to reveal some really large green caterpillars on the bare branches of the plant, and FINALLY I realized what the problem was.

For the last three days we've been picking hornworms off the plant. I don't see how there could be more every day, but somehow there are. Here's today's crop:

Nasty little buggers, aren't they? They are actually TOBACCO hornworms, not tomato hornworms (thank you Wikipedia). I can hardly bear to touch them. But boos like them.

Soon after this picture was taken, boos loaded up the caterpillars into the dump truck and began carrying them around the yard. Euuuuuwwww GROSS!

But you know, it kills me. How many books have we read about caterpillars and butterflies? Boos looked at the one big and two small hornworms and said, "The big one is the Dad!"

"No," I protested. "Don't you remember? Caterpillars come from eggs that are laid by butterflies and moths. The mom and dad of these caterpillars are moths!"

Boos stared at me, uncomprehending.

Oh well. What's really a drag about all this is that according to Wikipedia, the moth that sired these nasty things, the moth that they'd turn into if we'd let them, is a sphinx moth! Rocket Boy and I love sphinx moths! It feels terrible to kill their larvae.

But on the other hand, I've spent all summer watering this tomato plant and I WANT SOME TOMATOES FROM IT!

I know. You can't always get what you want. Especially when what you want is to have a garden in Ridgecrest.