Tomato Horned Worms

Do you know what this moth is?

This moth that was at my front door on 8-8-14.  It is what a tomato horned worm turns into.  This moth stayed here for about a day or a day and a half.

Here is the picture that Hubby took.

Here is an even closer view that he took.

This morning I went outside and this is want I saw on the ground.

Here is a close-up.  I sent these pictures to my husband and asked him if he thought it was from the squirrels.  It is much smaller than what I see in the backyard, but I didn't know what else had left it.

We started talking about the droppings in the front yard again.  Hubby forgot to look when he got home from work.  He went outside to look and found more that was green.  He started looking closely at the plant:

This is what he found.  These are the first tomato horned worms I have seen at my house.  After realizing what the dropping on the ground were I think I saw the same droppings 4 or 5 years ago.

Oh look another one.

Now there are three.

A close look at the plant shows the leaves are gone.

Several branches have all the leaves stripped off.

He put them in the center of the cul-de-sac to see what they would do.

I am at one side of the cul-de-sac and I zoomed in a little.  I can see them wandering around, but the camera didn't show them without zooming in some.  We watched them for about 10 minutes and they seemed to be pacing around in circles and back and forth.  The grandkids got here about 40 minutes later and we went outside right away so the kids could see them.  We couldn't find them anywhere.

Here is the only tomato they were feasting on.  While looking for another tomato that may have been eaten I found:

This little guy.  It looks like a baby Grasshopper.  I was hoping it was a Praying Mantis, but I couldn't tell until I got a look at the picture.  It kept running down the plant and we tried to get a picture.

Here is an overhead view of the tomato plants.

See the lost Hydrangea in the center?  This is what can happen when you plant in compost that has uncooked tomato seeds in it.  Tomato seeds are hard to kill in compost.  It doesn't get hot enough usually.  The seeds will germinate when they get a good amount of water.  I left them growing just to see what they would look like.  I don't know if they came from store bought tomatoes or home grown tomatoes last year.