We’ve been housing our own cocoon, thanks to my dad. He “harvests” cocoons and hands them out to his grandkids so they can enjoy the process.
One of our cocoons has been making noise for a few weeks, but had gotten sadly silent in the last few days. I checked on them every day, knowing that the time was coming soon. Finally, sometime last night, one of the cocoons hatched!
When we discovered the moth today, we let it go. I told Samantha that he/she might be hungry or thirsty so we needed to give him/her some space. It crawled around a bit on the monkey grass (but man, that thing is too huge for monkey grass!) but I finally got him on the white oak in the back. Sam loves the “eyes” and “smile” (pink/white stripe near the “eyes”). She brought him some water in a pot and offered to give him some grass. He’s still there almost 2 hours later. I figure he’ll get a little more active tonight. In the research that I’ve done, it leads a very short life as a moth. Interesting.
And while I’m on the topic, this dude was with us for a day or two a while back. Samantha loved it too. I do like having all this wildlife around. (Even if that means losing a bouncy ball down a chipmunk hole.)
UPDATE:
The second cocoon hatched the next day! The antennae were markedly different than the previous day’s moth, so I think we had one male and one female. He didn’t stick around like the female did.
