The Very Hungry Caterpillar (x13)

So, as you all know, we have a garden. As such, a garden invites wanted and unwanted insects, bugs, etc. When our lettuce was doing well, we found a couple of caterpillars. Anna's grandma gave her the book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar a few months back and Anna really loved the book and had parts of it memorized. So, when this little guy showed up, Dan wanted to show it to her.

See how cute and innocent looking he is?

Anna had fun looking at him.

Caterpillars can be so much fun.

Until you find one this size on your tomato plants!!!!!!!!

I watered the garden today and found this guy and it really freaked me out. I first thought it was like a pea pod or something and was really confused. I went to touch it and found out it was a huge, disgusting caterpillar! For some reason, any cuteness associated with caterpillars suddenly vanished. This thing was like 3 inches long and so big. He was a VERY hungry caterpillar. Well, I found another one close by. I didn't want to touch them, so I got some gloves on and tried to get him off, but they were stuck on there pretty good. So I went and got some scissors and just cut the branch off. I know, I turned into a complete wuss, but seriously did not want to handle them anymore than I had to. It just creeped me out.

Well, I decided I should keep checking, just in case there were more. Oh boy were there more. I found 13 total!!! We have 7 tomato plants, so there was plenty of leaves for these little suckers. The only consolation was I found one that was already dead.

They really ate a lot of leaves on this plant.

Above is the top of the plant, and here is the rest of the plant. See the difference?

Leaves and then no leaves.

So word to the wise, if you have a garden, watch out for The Very Hungry Caterpillar.