- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Remember Godzilla?
The 1954 iconic film, Godzilla, featured what Wikipedia calls "an enormous, destructive prehistoric sea monster awakened and empowered by nuclear radiation."
I have a Godzilla.
I have it only because my neighbor served it its eviction notice from her garden and gave it to me--a three-inch long tobacco hornworm doing a Joey Chestnut on her tomato plants.
She knew I wanted one. Actually, the Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of California, Davis, was looking for some hornworm frass (droppings) and had none.
I have plenty now.
If the stars align and Godzilla (Manduca sexta), continues to feel awakened, enlightened and empowered in my little habitat, she will become a Carolina sphinx moth, also known as a hawk moth or a tobacco hawkmoth.
See what an eviction notice can do?

