The end of the last moth

Well, I've been amazed at how long our moths have lived even with the intervention of our cats. We still had one moth hanging around for no apparent reason. Each day I check to see if he's still with us since I feel bad about just throwing the box out, moth and all. Though Leon and Mathilda, our cats, have tried to assist him on to his next life several times since they put his brother and sisters out of their misery. Our last moth was not cooperating with their help. Instead he stays firmly camped out in his hide out... a toilet paper tube.

This morning I did my usual moth check and was quite surprised to see what looked like an ant invasion. You see, I've heard horror stories from other moms this spring about ants and spiders attacking their silkworms, so I thought maybe the ants that patrol our house looking for anything interesting to eat had finally found the moth. After looking again at the infestation, I realized that the next generation of silkworms was hatching. Aw crap! These tiny creatures, who were maybe an eighth of an inch long, were never supposed to be born or should I say hatched. I'd stored away a dozen or so of their siblings still safe in their eggs in my refrigerator for next spring when I'm feeling up to dealing with the life cycle experiment again. Yep, next to the ketchup and last night leftovers is a little ziploc bag with a dozen silkworm eggs. I've already warned my mom that on her next visit to our house if she feels the urge to clean out my fridge not to touch the silkworm eggs.

So what did I do with the 100 or so new born silkworms?!? I quickly snatched up the box, told Grant that sadly the moth had died sometime last night then took the box, moth, silkworms and all outside and threw them in the trash. Did I ever check to see if the moth was really dead? No... the newly hatched silkworms freaked me out too much for me to ever check. Do I feel bad about killing all those silkworms? Yeah, but I'm not up to rearing a really big batch of them right now. Next time I'll be more careful and not assume that our silkworms will actually stick to the documented schedule. I'll get all the eggs out as soon as possible, so I don't have to face another huge silkworm invasion. And honestly, I'll probably encourage my cats on their missions of mercy once we have old and infirmed moths to deal with.

Now you know to never bring your silkworms or moths to our house. You just don't know what we'll do with them!