these guys (tomato hornworms) are fluorescent under UV so you can take a black light out at night to spot them
this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025
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chapotraphouse
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These little fuckers are both a bane of my garden, and the reason i've made such good friends with the crows.
Gotta plant the thing that attracts the thing that eats the thing eating your things.
"mmmm caterpillar"
"you're just here to pollinate the flower ms. wasp?"
"no"
"you just want yummy nectar right ms. wasp?"
"no"
"i'm going to put my lineage inside you along with a virus that disables your immune response. they will hatch inside your body and eat you from the inside, chew their way to the surface, and create cocoons for themselves. your flesh will be consumed to provide them with everything they need to start doing this to your family."
Mother, said a small tomato caterpillar to a wasp,
why are you kissing me so hard on my back?
You’ll see, said the industrious wasp, deftly inserting
a package of her eggs under the small caterpillar’s skin.
Every day the small caterpillar ate and ate the delicious
tomato leaves. I am surely getting larger, it said to itself.
This was a sad miscalculation. The ravenous hatched
wasp worms were getting larger. O world, the small
caterpillar said, you were so beautiful. I am only a small
tomato caterpillar, made to eat the good tomato leaves.
Now I am so tired. And I am getting even smaller. Nature
smiled. Never mind, dear, she said. You are a lovely link
in the great chain of being. Think how lucky it is to be born.
“Yes, Think” by Ruth Stone
Bleak
Wasps
In the war between wasps and caterpillars, I'm joining the side of the caterpillars against wasps every fucking time. Sorry gardeners.
I hate those flying little terrorists.
Wasps are great when they aren't aggressive towards us. Yellowjackets are relatively docile until August. And waspy wasps (thin midsection) are rarely aggressive. And they are fantastic predators that are often the missing piece of a healthy ecosystem, including gardens.
But bald faced hornets are always assholes.
I was on a camping trip last year and we were all hanging out under this canopy hiding from the sun. There were little bugs/gnats flying around near the peak of the canopy, tiny things.
At one point a wasp got into the canopy and spent the next 10 minutes attacking and killing the smaller gnats with surgical precision. It would hover, relatively motionless compared to the gnats, and when they came into range (maybe 25-50mm) the wasp would shoot forward and grab the smaller gnat.
It was impressive, I still hate wasps and it reinforced that they're jerks; but it was impressive and I won't soon forget it.
Death to wasps. Long live the bumble bee!
Almost as thick as those honking fingers
imagine being a insectivore bird and finding one of these things
the insectvore bird in question
leave my favorite greek comedian alone. let him eat the all the peppers he wants.
I think that's a tomato hornworm! They are indeed gigantors, and surprisingly dense/heavy
And they turn into Sphinx moths that look cool
Kind of cute 
Finally, candids of my favorite celebrity
Without a full spectrum of their natural diet, these things have a turquoise color instead of a green one.
They still are able to go through their full life cycle just fine, they just aren't camouflaged for live foliage.
All I know about growing them is that we had a limited number of them on wet substrate in 32oz containers, and the breeding adults were fed hummingbird-style on a syrup that was boiled in-house.
You don't want these anywhere near your garden though.