Huge Caterpillar

    Yesterday I was in the open air bodega, a concrete storage area, and I heard a “THUMP!” behind me.  I spun around and looked at the ground.  I saw a four inch long caterpillar sitting on the cement.  It must have fallen from a tree.  It was brown with one wide white stripe down it’s back and it was thicker than my thumb.  I quickly picked it up with a shirt and ran to show Griffin and my parents.

After we finished our “ewwws” and “uugggghhhhs” I put him in a little container while I looked for a bigger box.  I found a big plastic bin and I put some leaves and sticks on the bottom of the bin so it could climb and eat.  five minutes later, after the caterpillar was settled in, we measured it and it was exactly three and a half inches. 

This morning I looked in the cage and was shocked too see that the caterpillar had grown black stripes over night!  Each stripe is about a centimeter wide and circles the whole body, there are twelve stripes total and they make it look like a tiger.