A few weeks ago, I was entering my home through the front door. In a garden patch near our doorstep, my wife Anchal had planted Green Taro (Colocasia spp), better known to us as arbi (also called sempu or chempu in South India) and on the plant, I noticed a long green creature. At once intrigued, I bent down and found a marvellous parrot-green caterpillar. The caterpillar was three inches long, had a short yellowish-brown tail, and eye-like markings on its head. I immediately recognised it to be that of a hawkmoth, which is thick-bodied and has a short stumpy tail, and hence is easy to identify.
Wow, I said to myself! A moth figured out that a nature lover lives here, and laid its eggs on the arbi plant! I had not seen the caterpillar previously and hence did not know which moth species it would grow up to be. Fortunately in my home, I am prepared for such events. I have a large aquarium, in which I have filled soil with dried leaves and twigs. I use this aquarium not for fish, but to rear creepy-crawlies!
Now, caterpillars and other insect larvae feed on only a few specific plant species. Hence before I can do any rearing, I always need to know which plant the larva will feed on. In this case, I had no problem. Even as I watched, the caterpillar chomped its way through part of an arbi leaf. It ate quickly, and was clearly hungry!
I plucked the leaf along with the caterpillar and placed it in the aquarium. For the next few days, I made frequent visits to observe the caterpillar. Rearing caterpillars is like bringing up a baby. You have to feed them with fresh leaves regularly (and just like babies, they are fussy, needing leaves of only some specific plants!). As the caterpillar eats a lot, it shits a lot, too (just like babies)! So, you need to keep the area clean of its droppings. Finally, the area in which it is kept should be moist, so I ensure the soil in the aquarium is wet, so that the caterpillar has a moist environment to live in.
A few days after I placed the caterpillar in the aquarium, it metamorphosed into a greenish-brown cocoon, which wriggled every now and then. Now, for the next three weeks or so, the cocoon needed only to be watched and not tended to. I was worried — I had a two week trip planned to Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland. I requested my wife to observe the cocoon every morning, in case the moth emerged. She readily agreed and I left for my trip.
As luck would have it, the moth emerged from its cocoon the very morning I returned from northeast India! Now, I could identify it as the Common Rippled Hawkmoth (Eupanacra mydon). This moth has a wide distribution, but was only known from Kumaon (in Uttarakhand) eastwards to northeast India. This was probably the first record of this moth species from the Garhwal Himalaya! I am lucky that the hawkmoth came visiting to my doorstep!
(Feedback and queries are welcome at sanjay.sondhi1@gmail.com)