A Luna Moth!

Joy, five points to you! And five points to Derek Gladen...you are correct! The mysterious creature in the picture of Tuesday's blog is a Luna Moth. The picture on wikipedia matches the moth pictures we took at the cofffee shop exactly! Cool!

Noah, you get a point for creativity. I wouldn't put it past "DreamWorks" animation to breed millions of huge green moths to promote Shrek III. You would think they could have genetically engineered them to have little pictures of Shrek on their wings. Hmmmm. Take a closer look at the moth picture above. What do you think?

Now for the real thing! I googled it: here is what I found:
Although the photo does indeed look a little like something out of a spooky Steven Spielberg movie, it's actually a lateral closeup of the caterpillar of a Luna Moth, Actias luna. Found across eastern North America, the Luna Moth (left) is in the Saturniidae, the family that includes Giant Silkworm Moths; these are large moths with wingspans of up to almost 6", but the 5" Luna Moth appears even larger because of long tails on its hindwings.