'Endangered' Luna Moths

[Doug Yanega]

Liz Day (Hi, Liz) wrote:

>There ought to be
>pieces of wildness that are not treated as museums, where kids can roam
>around and make a mess and collect bugs without interference.

There are! They're called "back yards"! ;-)
For serious, my driveway in New York City yielded over 800 insect species,
leps excluded, over the years. It's where I learned to love insects.

>Baffled owner of "Fred", the oldest living regal moth pupa,
>who is not ready to hatch out just yet, thank you.

Curious coincidence is that I've got an entire menagerie of pupae named
"Fred", all of whom have been sitting for 6 or more months and not yet
quite ready to hatch. But, since it rained here today for the third time in
the last week (prior to that the last rain was the end of May), they may
soon begin to show themselves. Megalopygids, Limacodids, Saturniids,
Arctiids, Chrysomelids, and more.

(And, to stave off possible comments, I will quote a Monty Python skit -
"Are all your pets named Eric?" "Nothing at all odd about that - Kemil
Ataturk had an entire mangerie named Abdul!")

;-)

Doug Yanega    Depto. de Biologia Geral, Instituto de Ciencias Biologicas,
Univ. Fed. de Minas Gerais, Cx.P. 486, 30.161-970 Belo Horizonte, MG   BRAZIL
phone: 031-448-1223, fax: 031-44-5481  (from U.S., prefix 011-55)
                  http://www.icb.ufmg.br/~dyanega/
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82