Strange Moth

This is a fast breaking TDB news flash. I'm your trusty doggie reporter Chester L. W. Spaniel. 

A strange insect was just spotted on the milkweeds in our front yard garden patch. Ghostwriter thought it was a wasp at first. After taking a closer look at the photos she took, she discovered it was actually a type of clear wing moth. Further research revealed it was a southwestern squash vine borer.

That odd, orange and black fuzzy looking thing below it's body is actually one of its legs! When I saw these photos I instantly thought about my dearest Princess Leah, who recently did a report on a beautiful moth she found. However, we then discovered that this bug is actually quite a pest in some parts of the country, and can destroy pumpkins and other types of squashes. Fortunately, we do not have any pumpkins growing in our yard this year. And besides, what is this southern insect doing all the way up in New York State? 

We will now go off on a tangent. Sort of. 

We have lots of milkweeds growing in the front yard so that hopefully, we'll attract some monarch butterflies. The flowers are really nice and they smell like honey. Lots of bees, wasps, ants, and flies are attracted to them. But ghostwriter found that on almost every plant was a daddy-long-legs spider!

Hiding under a leaf.

Do you see him in the middle of the buds checking out the ant on the leaf?

Setting up an ambush.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program already in progress.