It looks like a tomato hornworm! Aren't they cool?! We get them about every other year or so. Are there any tomatoes near your deck? Check your tomato plants...these caterpillars are hard to find because they have good camoflauge...but look near where you see chomped leaves and stems. They do a lot of damage to tomato plants.
You should kill any that you see, otherwise they will crawl down, burrow into the ground, overwinter in the soil, and come out as moths next year to lay more eggs on next year's tomatoes!
Check to see if any of the caterpillars have white oval bumps sticking out of their bodies. The white things are parasitoid eggs...a wasp laid its egg right on the caterpillar, and the larva will hatch into the caterpillar, and eat it from the inside out. So cool!
It looks like a tomato hornworm! Aren't they cool?! We get them about every other year or so. Are there any tomatoes near your deck? Check your tomato plants...these caterpillars are hard to find because they have good camoflauge...but look near where you see chomped leaves and stems. They do a lot of damage to tomato plants.
ReplyDeleteYou should kill any that you see, otherwise they will crawl down, burrow into the ground, overwinter in the soil, and come out as moths next year to lay more eggs on next year's tomatoes!
Check to see if any of the caterpillars have white oval bumps sticking out of their bodies. The white things are parasitoid eggs...a wasp laid its egg right on the caterpillar, and the larva will hatch into the caterpillar, and eat it from the inside out. So cool!
Love,
your bug-loving niece :)