Green Caterpillars

We seem to be over run with caterpillars right now. We found this guy on the mat inside our kitchen, I am not sure how he got there. We looked him up on What's That Bug . Com. It is an Io Moth Caterpillar, because those fuzzy looking parts can sting, we chose to let him go in the garden bed outside.

The Io Moth (Automeris io) is a very colorful North American moth. As an adult it will look like this:
The female is on top, the male moth is the colorful one.

Then we happened to find this guy on the front porch.

The kids helped find him on What's that Bug. This is a Luna Moth Caterpillar. We found information on him and learned that he makes cocoon inside of a dried up leaf on the ground.

I let the kids take pictures of it for their blog, and then we put the caterpillar with a Plumeria leaf inside one of our many bug jars.

We hope he will be happy in the jar and that we will be able to observe him as he changes. Patrick likes the idea of a science project in a bottle.