Back in mid October I was in my front yard looking at the trunk of our very tall cherry tree for signs of the dreaded Cherry bark Tortrix (an imported moth that damages cherry trees). The evidence of them is pretty small, so I was closely peering at the bark when I was mildly startled by two little blue eyes staring at me from a dark hollow - the 'false eyes' of a big caterpillar ! almost an inch and a half long, a deep chocolate brown with some dim blue spots , a yellowish and black slash across the upper body - and those two little fake eyes on the anterior end. It was there perched upright and from my angle it looked remarkably like the face of Homer Simpson. I've seen photos of various bugs with 'false eyes' and thought smugly that maybe a bird would fall for that but not me ! But I'd been had. I'd been had by a bug and it was only 9 in the morning.

A bit of a closer look revealed that Homer (I normally don't give nicknames to invertibrate's , or other wild creatures, but this was just too good) - was not moving, and looking into the darkish crevice I could see two little lines (like fishermans monofilament ) attaching Homer to the tree.

So I went into the house where ironically I already had my copy of "how to know: The Immature Insects" out on the table - it was just before the mid-term elections and every other year I haul out this book to help me decide what politician not to vote for. -Anyway I looked up caterpillars in there, which led me to Pyle's "Butterflies of Cascadia", then on to Buguide.net online. I discovered that Homer was the larvae of a Western Swallowtail Butterfly, which is one of our common and showy butterflies here.

Normally green in their active caterpillar stage they turn brown when ready to pupate - which is where Homer was at. A few days later I went to check on Homer - the eyes were looking a bit blurry, as if Homer had been drinking a few too many Duff beers - something was going on. Several days after that a shocking transformation was taking place - Homer had rotated to hanging sideways and a big crusty horn was sticking out of his back - it looked like an encrustation. What I found out later was that the 'horn' was the chrysalis developing inside the thin skin of of Homer and the skin was falling off. When I checked the next day Homer was not recognizable - what was there was the fully formed chrysalis. It looks somewhat like a Big Wall mountaineers hanging bivouac tent - in this case the 'cliff' being the trunk of a big cherry tree - it's still hanging by the two threads.

While I've read about these things, it was a real treat to actually see the process, a truly amazing thing. I can only imagine whats going on in that little bivouac tent now ! One thing I noticed is that the color of the chrysalis is just a dead ringer for the color of the algae- tinted cherry bark. As usual I wished I'd been a bit more observant - I don't remember if the chrysalis was originally this green tint , designed to match, or if algae is tinting the bug as well.

When checking the mail now in May and June, or with our weather maybe July, I will also check on Homer - hopefully soon to be a big bright Swallowtail butterfly


Jeff Gibson
hangin with Homer in
Everett Wa