meet Timothy

This past weekend proved to be nature-filled!

Firstly while walking Dexter my daughter heard some rustling from the undergrowth.  Thinking it might be a cat and therefore worried that Dexter might just do what terriers do and try to eat it, she carefully looked into the bushes only to spot a family of… hedgehogs!!

I haven't seen a hedgehog in my neighbourhood for over 20 years, with a resident of our garden being the last one.  I think he liked all the slugs that were eating my hostas!

And then my wife came rushing in to say she'd found something strange on our patio.  So, I then rushed out to find an elephant hawk moth caterpillar just resting there.

Now, if I'd left it there then no doubt a bird, cat or even one of those hedgehogs would have made a tasty feast of it, so I scooped it up and brought it indoors where I found an old plastic box which I filled with some earth for it.

After some research it became apparent that it is possible to raise one of these caterpillars to adulthood (or moth-hood I suppose!!).  They like to eat fuchsias so we found some of those for it and have prepared its little home ready for the burrowing and burying stage where hopefully it'll over winter and emerge as a beautiful and quite large pink and yellow moth next spring.

My daughter decided it was a male, and christened him TiMOTHy!  

What else?