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I must confess, though, that the cuteness of Very Hungry Caterpillars is limited. To books. In real life? Not so cute.
Please feast (haha) your eyes on what we found in our garden this weekend:
Do you see him? He's very camouflaged. And not at all technically a caterpillar-- technically he's a Tomato Hornedworm. Check out that reddish horn!!
He's a creepy looking GIANT little thing for sure. And he can wipe out your tomato plants pretty quickly. We found and eliminated about 5 of them on Saturday. They are too creepy to touch, so Matt used pliers to remove them from the plants, and then his boot finished the drill.
But last night my mother-in-law was over and checking out our plants. We found 2 more of these dudes and she was so brave she pulled them off with her FINGERS and stomped them with her FLIP FLOP. I was pretty dang impressed. I obviously need to up my gardening game.
Although there are definitely signs that these guys have been happily chomping away on some of our leaves and tomatoes, we still have TONS of tomatoes and they're just starting to turn red! So I think as long as we remain vigilant, we'll be okay. I just thought you would like to spice up your morning with a picture of a really scary worm. RIP, scary hornedworms. Your horns are nowhere near as awesome as a unicorn's horns, so...sorry bout that.
Is it weird that I actually like caterpillars? Maybe not huge, horned ones like that, but I do like tiny little green ones! :)
ReplyDeleteThat. is. disgusting. And huge. And disgusting.
ReplyDeleteI applaud your mother-in-law. The closest I can get to ridding our garden of pests is knocking Japanese beetles into a mason jar of water!
Ughhhh! What on earth? Yep, that sealed it, I'm not gardening. If home grown tomatoes require me to remove THAT, it's just not happening! That is DISGUSTING!!!
ReplyDeleteWell look at me I am in that 10% percent of your readers, not a parent or a teacher...what do I win???!! I have to say yuck on the worm BUT it does look pretty cool blending in with the rest of the plant.
ReplyDeleteThis totally grosses me out... as does the idea of touching them or feeling them squish under my feet. Props to you all for your bravery!
ReplyDeleteThis morning Rachel squished a bug with her finger and then picked it up and pulled it apart with her bare hands. I think she'd be up to dealing with those caterpillars! Me -- I was freaking out and yelling for Dave to bring a washcloth :)
ReplyDeleteDefinitely too big to squash with a flip flop. I can only imagine the gore. I would have relocated that thing to the toilet and flushed it.
ReplyDeleteI just vomited in my mouth a little bit. So gross. Maybe this is why I don't have a garden this year. I have heard that beer in little dishes keeps slugs away, would it work for that super slug?
ReplyDeleteahh crazy. we had these last week on our squash plants and had NEVER seen them before. Those little suckers are sneaky with their camouflage skin. No bueno! I just left them, but clearly should have removed them :)
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh...those are GROSS! I only think inch worms are cute in real life...the rest of the wormy/caterpillary things give me the heeby jeebies. I don't think we have hornedworms here...I sure hope we don't!!
ReplyDeleteOh my! You are not alone on this one! I've snapped a few photos of those same creepy crawlies in our garden too! GROSS!!! I was shocked to see how much damage they did to our tomatoes! Let me know if you find a good way to get rid of and/or prevent them!
ReplyDeleteThat thing is HUGE! Gross, gross, gross. I can't even imagine what a mess they made when they got squished! They look rather juicy.
ReplyDeleteI will now proceed to having nightmares.
ReplyDeleteSo. Nasty. Big. Gross. Nasty!
Those ugly little fellows ran rampant on our tomato plants when I was a girl. My father used to remove them by the bucketful!
ReplyDeleteEeeew! What a creepy looking thing!!
ReplyDeleteVery Hunger Caterpillar = cute and endearing.
ReplyDeleteThose things in the pictures? Actually making me a little bit nauseous.
That is the scariest thing I've ever seen! You're more hardcore than I am because you got within photo taking distance!
ReplyDeleteomg. just omg.
ReplyDeleteand gag.
That is the biggest one I've ever seen! Dang!
ReplyDeleteAlso, love the new blog design!! :)
My grandmother used to chops anything that attacked her garden in half with the secateurs. blarg!
ReplyDeleteOMG! O.M.G! LOL. I have never seen one of those. That is the craziest looking thing I have ever seen!
ReplyDeleteEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!
ReplyDeletethat.is.crazy!
ReplyDeletewe don't grow 'em like that in Canada (or at least none that I've seen). I get a sick feeling in my stomach just thinking the sound they make when one squishes them with a flip flop!
where I grew up we had a couple seasons where the smaller caterpillars reached out of control populations and they'd literally cover the roads and all you'd hear driving down the street was 'pop, pop, pop' - the sound of them exploding under your tires. childhood trauma.
Eww!!! Stomped them?? But they're so JUICY!! Blech. That's a bit more hardcore than I tend to be.
ReplyDeleteForget the caterpillar - where are the gardening posts??? Seriously, your garden looks pretty awesome even from the limited views of it here. I would LOVE to hear more about how you do it!
ReplyDelete