Petit paon de nuit butterfly

We vegetable gardeners have a bit of a bad rep when it comes to the elimination of grubs.

I just have to think back to my gooseberry sawfly infestation in the soft fruit orchard to shudder and grimace.

So much destruction.

But last week I was plodding up the hill after watering my new cherry tree (doing nicely, despite the heat) when I saw the strangest thing on the road.

A big fat green cigar. Wriggling its way in the direction of the vegetable garden.  Now being well versed in thrilling poisonous spitting caterpillars from our farm in Australia – we just called them hairy grubs – I didn’t get too close.

But it was moving so slowly I had time to get my camera, snap some shots. And then put down my secateurs so you could see the scale.

This beast was huge. And with amazing yellow spikes.  I didn’t have time to find out what it was, so I carefully scooped it up in my hat and took him to the edge of the forest where I let it go right next to some wild carrot plants (Queen Anne’s lace).

And then scuttled inside to contact our local Eyrieux Valley nature association to ask the experts.

The only caterpillars I have seen that were as noteworthy were the ones munching their way through my yellow achillea plants in the small bed in front of the potager wall. (Annoying.)

But great colours. And boy do they do the death squirm with speed. This one had rolled itself up into a ball and flung itself off the flat head of the achillea flower with such swiftness, I had to scrabble about at the base of the plants for ages before the yellow and black dots gave it away.

With a bit of research I found out that it is possibly a member of the saturniid family.  Or chenille de saturnide if you want to be more local.  And it feeds on parsley in one of its stages of growth.  A quick check; yep, the achillea plant is right next to some gone to seed parsley in a big pot. (Ooh, that reminds me, I need to sort those bright red pots in the garden; the lilies are not happy and I need to replace them with something else.)

But mere hours after I put in my photo to the good folk at BEED (http://beed07.free.fr/L%20association.htm  Bassin de l’Eyrieux Environnement Développement) they came back with some amazing images.

Pause to view in a very large size.

Incredible. A peacock butterfly or is it a peacock moth? Just look at the detail. This is the male (of course) with the showy antennas like feathers.  And those deflect the predator eyes remind me of owls or deer. Wonderful.

I wish of course I was able to build a giant bug house where I could feed my grub an endless supply of juicy food so it could hibernate and then turn into this creature.  But I have to be content with not squishing it; hopefully putting it somewhere safe and keeping a lookout for its gorgeous butterfly form.