Home Enthomology

A few weeks ago we bought four little plants: basil, mint, rosmarin and lavander.
About 3 days ago my girlfriend noticed some little dark drops all around the base of the mint plant. Some leaves were beaten. We initially thought that the cat was going to rip the leaves and scratching out the earth. The drops were tiny, but there were PLENTY all around the pot.
We cleaned the drops and then went to have dinner always keeping an eye on the mint plant. After about 15-20 minutes we saw some drops around the pot again, but the cat hadn’t been around!
As soon as we were done eating we went to check the pot and the plant again. I moved it, I squished the pot. We were now sure that it must have been some kind of animal.

The day after, in the afternoon when we came home from work MANY leaves had been cut in pieces and we had a TON of drops all around the pot.
That same night my friend Sid was coming for dinner. During the dinner I decided to ask him if he had any idea and described what had happened.
All the three of us went to look at the plant once again. He confirmed our suspicion of some kind of little animal or insect, but didn’t know much more.
After we had dinner we went again to check what was going on and suddenly noticed a caterpillar!
A big FAT green caterpillar was hung on branches. He was quietly eating a leaf. We stood there looking at him eating the leaf. He was amazingly fast and ate half of the leave in a few minutes.
It was really impressive how fast he could eat… and then we saw where the “little drops” came from.
At first I had even thought that some tiny insect was inside the soil and popping out pieces of earth while digging inside or something like that.

Later during the evening I went to the kitchen to get something to drink and happily discovered that the big fat caterpillar (that we named Pedro) was not alone. Pedrita was there too.

So here’s one picture I took of Pedro. (Note: I have NO idea how to distinguish the two caterpillars)

A little research on internet taught us that the caterpillar will turn into a month.
Yesterday we moved the plant on the balcony and now it seems they are gone. Probably moved to a new plant with more leaves as they hate SO MANY in just 3 days!

Special thanks to Sid for helping us in the research!