The Spotty White Tiger Moth Pounces

There is a little girl who loves*loves*loves caterpillars!  Her greatest delight is to find woollybears and other such ones inching along. I call her my LeadBugger.  She couldn't believe the teeny tiny one she found, pictured above. Smallest one we've ever seen!  It was an exciting day.  She always has some sort of creature, so we are fortunate to have lots of exciting days!  One day when we were out riding scooters and bikes, I noticed a white woollybear caterpillar ambling across the road.  Everyone else passed it, but sure enough, when I caught up with LeadBugger she was walking along, scooter-steering with one hand, fuzzy white caterpillar climbing on the other.  

 When we got home she prepared an "observation jar".  The caterpillar, however, quickly started spinning, turning it into a metamorphosis jar!  But what would come out?  And would it?  We've had plenty of cocoons that never produced before...

Then one afternoon LeadBugger came walking into the room talking to me, stopped abruptly in her tracks and exclaimed with a start, "What is that?!"  Her eyes were so wide, her face so serious, her question repeated so rapidly, I was quite unsure what was going on, and then she showed me:

  

The fuzzy white caterpillar had emerged! Only now it was a moth.  A Spotty White Tiger Moth to be precise.  With an impressive abdomen.

We admired the striking colors and patterns.  I'm not sure that I'd ever seen such a moth before. 

We watched the wings slowly unfold. 

How velvety and luxe it looks!

We marveled that six such long, sleek, striped legs could come from such a low-legged scurrier, that such a big, bulgy body could come out from such a small cocoon and its opening, that something so simple and uniform could become something so complex and differentiated. 

This becomes this: 

What a difference!

And finally she let it go.  (But not after it spent a good long time crawling all over her hands and arm.  "It doesn't want to leave me!"  Spotty White Tiger Moths have surprisingly sticky feet!  

It's now gone, but the memory of it is sure a fun one!