December 11, 2004 [LINK]

"That's gotta hurt!"

Hornworm The transition to an automated blogging system is now virtually complete. The "home blog" page (index.shtml; note the "s" in the file name extension) has the same layout as the main home page ("index.html"), but the interactive graphical effects do not include the topical montage photos which are found on the latter page. To quickly toggle between the two home pages, just click on the banner at the top.

I was going through my photo albums today and this picture of a Tomato (?) hornworm caught my attention. Those are not grains of rice stuck to its body, they are wasp larvae (!), contentedly sucking the life juices out of this hapless creature as they grow up. I took this in 1993 or so, when I was living in Charlottesville. I found several of these colorful caterpillars chewing on the leaves of my hot pepper plants, so I suppose the wasps were helping me out by keeping them under control.