Do you homeschool year round?  This is a question that I’m most often asked this time of year.  How can we not?  Home learning takes form every day all day all year round.  Do we sit in our over heated dining room and let sweat droplets kerplunk on our academic worksheets?  Not usually.  However, the short one was out on the fence this morning giving his daily salutations to the neighbor’s new puppies. He spotted a huge moth on the fence on the other side.  "It was on the fence pretty much at the top,  I was sayin’ (hhhhi puuuppies) and it pretty much flied up the fence to me.  (his explanation)" The tall one has his camera out making a movie of the whole thing. I have been trying to take pictures to show how large it is, any detail that will help us figure out what it is. I went to the garage to find the one that my hubby found in the garage last week, it is different. The short one says at he knows the difference between the boy and girl cause the antenna is fuzzy and one is straight. We’ll have to see if he is right when we look it up.  Right now the boys are taking photographs and talking about all the detail of the eyes and wings that they can see.  Did you know that they have black scales on his eyes?  Did you see the different antennas? Nathan! Nathan! shouts the all knowing short one to the tall big brother.  I’ll up load some photos and then we’ll go hit the research books to give these big 4+ fellah’s a name. Pray for the one that’s still alive. I got out a pet carrier for him, but the short one is having too much fun letting it crawl all over him.  I trust that the Lord had him lay his egg for reproduction before he brought him to the short brother. :)(Click here to see photos) I did some research, and found that it is a  Giant Silk Worm – Polyphemus moth . 

 

It is hard to tell from the photos we took.  The one that is closed up died that way, so there is no way to spread the wings out without hurting the specimen. There are clearly blue spots on the bottom on the inside wing. Very cool.