Midwife to a Polyphemus Moth

When you live in Florida, you can expect natural surprises on a regular basis. A couple of days ago, for example, I was looking out my second story window in downtown Pensacola when a large redtail hawk landed on the live oak branch not 30 feet from me.

So it wasn't too shocking today as I was taking my 6-month-old non-poodle poodle home from a walk when I noticed something crawling in the grass that looked remarkably like a tarantula. On closer inspection, I realized I was looking at a giant polyphemus moth trying to emerge from its cocoon. The legs were thick and huge and the antenna fanned out like a peacock's tail. Glued in some fashion to the walnut-size cocoon were several liveoak leaves that gave the whole production a sense of tribal ritual. Apparently, the strong winds today had broken the branch on which the cocoon was attached. The poor giant moth couldn't get grounded and so was dragging its prison in an attempt to break free of it.

I took the little critter home and put it in a cardboard box and held the branch as if it were still attached to the tree. Slowly the creature pulled free, but its wings were folded and crumpled, and I thought it would never make it. Gradually, however, it climbed up a cardboard box and hung itself out to dry. The little crumpled wings turned into about a five-inch wingspan that is still expanding.

I'm keeping him by the window in the hope that he'll take flight (do they only travel at night?). But I'm worried some hawk or bird will grab him as soon as he is free. I feel like a protective mother and am hoping he'll stay in his little box a bit longer before testing his wings.

The two videos above are of my moth, but I found a time-lapse video on youtube that really tells the tale. Life is so amazing!!



DAY 2-3. I left the shoebox and moth near an open window that night, and in the morning, the box was empty. The moth, however, had chosen to attach itself to a wall rather than fly out the window. It was threatening to storm, so when I left for the day, I closed the window. That evening, the first thing I noticed was a lizard at the top of a floor-to-ceiling window (see pic) and the moth on the second section. This gave me a cold shudder because I had once before witnessed a lizard attacking a huge moth in my room. (Long story, but these windows raise up into the attic and both the lizard and moth had come through the opening from the attic. I heard the fluttering one night and put the light on just in time to see the battle, but not in time to save the moth.) I immediately nudged the moth from its perch and then took several photos of the moth with his wings outspread (see top photo). Fearful of the lizard's intentions and worried that the prevailing wind was too strong still, I boxed up the moth for the night.

This morning, the lizard had disappeared and I let the moth go out into the predawn world. I watched him fly a bit spastically, and then I went to make a cup of coffee. I saw him flying some more as I looked out the kitchen window. Yes, he can fly pretty well now, but I worry about birds and lizards and cats that can catch him. How do these beautiful creatures ever survive???

Ultimate Blog Party 2009

This virtual blog party is surreal. It's international in depth and up-close and personal in breadth. The party, which runs March 20-27 is hosted by a blog site called 5minutesformom.com, and already the stats are impressive. On day 2, close to 1,500 bloggers of just about every persuasion have added their link to the party. Nearly 200 have posted their facebook links, and nearly 600 have signed posted their twitter addresses.

Invitations to the party come in all sorts of media - from photos of wine salutes to families around the table sharing cupcakes and party favors.

Of course, there are nearly 100 prizes that help spur the activity, many baby related items, but also ones generic enough to be useful to almost everyone. My favorite was an international prize:
INTL 34 — $30 care package of Italian regional delicacies
Provided by: Milanese Masala
Prize details: Hankering for an authentic taste of Italy? Milanese Masala is donating a $30 care package full of goodies direct from “The Boot”.

I've not only been hankering for an authentic taste of Italy ever since I left San Francisco, but have entered every trip to Italy sweepstakes I can find. (Come on, Olive Garden, be good to this half-Italian pizza lover!)

The prize entry rules require that you post comments on at least 20 blogger websites. I decided to visit The Milanese Masala site first at http://milanesemasala.wordpress.com/2009/03/. There I learned the Masala came from the blogger's Indian heritage (I love anything cooked using garam masala spice mix.) Linda posted a great Seinfeld clip on the Costanza family's Festivus celebration (where they have a pipe instead of a tree and spend their holiday being critical). In a archived post, she mentioned a Milanese singing idol named Adriano Celentano. He apparently loved Elvis and imitated his style in some of his songs, such as the one called "Prisencolinensinainciusol" below on youtube. Can you imagine that title ever reaching No. 1 on the Hit Parade? Fact is, I watch this video frequently now. I love it!
Ciao bella, for now.




PS - If some other worthy blogger wins the Milanese package, I'd be interested in (aren't these prizes wonderful and generous???):

58 – Kitchen Aid Artisan Stand Mixer
Provided by: Moms Who Think
Prize details: From Amish Friendship Bread to Decadent Cheesecake and all the meals in between dessert, Moms Who Think has recipes you’ll love. We would like to donate a Kitchen Aid Artisan Stand Mixer to help make one lucky winner’s home cooking even easier. (winner’s choice of color, $349.99 retail value)

21 — $50 gift certificate to Target Stores
Provided by: Agoosa - Funny Name, Sound Advice
Prize details: Agoosa would like to donate a $50 Target gift card to one winner.

88 –$40 gift certificate to Carrabba’s Italian Grill
Provided by: The Divine Miss Mommy
Prize details: Discover the Passion, the Thrill and the Grill of Carrabba’s! The Divine Miss Mommy would like to donate a $40 gift certificate to three winners to be used at any Carrabba’s Italian Grill.

20 – 5 bars of handmade goat milk soap, your choice of scent
Provided by: Goat Milk Stuff
Prize details: Feel the difference that goat milk makes! Goat Milk Stuff is donating 5 bars of our handmade goat milk soap (made with milk from our own dairy goats). And the best part - you get to choose your favorite scents!

43 — Two $25 gift certificate to eco Store USA
Provided by: Rachael @ Little Bites of Heaven
Prize details: Eco store has eco friendly products for your home + life; their tagline reads No Nasty Chemicals™. Little Bites of Heaven would like to offer a $25 gift certificate to two winners to be used at their online store.

83 – Prize: $25 Gift Certificate to ecostoreusa.com
Provided by: Sweet Serendipity
Prize details: Winner will receive a gift card worth $25 to be used at ecostoreusa.com to purchase earth friendly products.

55 – $21 Strawberry Smash Moisturizer from Farmhouse Fresh
Provided by: Now What Baby
Prize details: Enjoy this deliciously scented strawberry moisturizer made with live strawberry cells! The packaging is so cute you have just have to see it!!


21 — $50 gift certificate to Target Stores
Provided by: Agoosa - Funny Name, Sound Advice
Prize details: Agoosa would like to donate a $50 Target gift card to one winner.

22 — $50 gift certificate to Target Stores
Provided by: Beginner Baby Blog
Prize details: Everyone loves a gift card! Beginner Baby Blog would like to donate a $50 Target gift card to one winner.

26 — $30 gift certificate to Target
Provided by: Little Miss Hannah - Our Fight Against Gaucher’s Disease
Prize details: Go shopping!

91 — $25 gift card to Target
Provided by: Mummy Deals
Prize details: What girly doesn’t want a moment to splurge at Target? Enter to win a $25 gift card from Mummy Deals and go shopping on me!

118 — $25.00 Old Navy Gift Card
Provided by: Manic Mother
Prize details: Buy something fun for yourself or the little one

130 — $25 gift certificate for DOVE Chocolate Discoveries
Provided by: Aimee Wilson, Independent Chocolatier
Prize details: Discover new ways of enjoying chocolate with exclusive DOVE Chocolate Discoveries. This prize must be redeemed directly with this Chocolatier only.

12 — $20 gift certificate to The Gift Closet
Provided by: The Gift Closet
Prize details: Pamper yourself with this $20 Gift Certificate to The Gift Closet! Choose from my handmade Shea Butter, Soy Linen & Body Spray, Scrabble Pendants, or Scrabble Magnets!

42 — 5 kajeet phones with $5 of airtime
Provided by: kajeet
Prize details: kajeet the pay-as-you-go cell phone service for kids, created from a kid’s point of view. kajeet services include unlimited free parental controls and GPS – along with all the text, pictures, talk and games that kids want. kajeet is pay as you go with no long term contracts, no activation fees, no termination fees, and no high overage surprises.

ONE CALL ALLOWED FOR ROYAL CARIBBEAN'S CLUES TO THE CRUISE SWEEPSTAKES

Two days ago, I came across the new sweep by Royal Caribbean that ordinarily would not draw me in because it takes more than 20 seconds to enter. I've never taken a cruise, and really have no desire to take one, but the contest starts out with really fine animation of a big ship that looks like the Love Boat. Posted on its stern (or bow?) are 25 squares, and out of curiosity I clicked on one. A word game similar to Wheel of Fortune popped up. Curiously, there were no letters to scramble and when I clicked, no real help.

Well, the shortened version is I became addicted to figuring it all out. Some clues took me to a youtube video, some to the advertising posted on the game site. The one that really impressed me was a clue that popped up in the advertising to the right of my yahoo mail center. I never look at the stupid ad videos that slow down my mail, but this had the image and the letters I was trying to unscramble. Great scot, I thought, do they have so much control of our computers now that they know which clue I'm working on and send it to yahoo when I check my messages. No, I reasoned, it's a big contest and they know I play games, so it's a coincidence. Whatever, I was glad for the letters.

Again, cutting to the chase, I worked quite a few hours (doesn't the time fly when you're playing games?) and got down to several games of skill I just couldn't beat. One was a maze with a bunch of Hs, and you have to collect all of them. Another was a bunch of flags you have to puzzle back together. The third was several rows of deliciously looking smoothies that need to be sipped down before they spill over. Dang, I couldn't get any of them. So, like the Slumdog Millionaire, I made my one call. Naturally, it was to my 12-year-old granddaughter.

"Mikela, are you on your computer?" Yes. "Go to cluesforthecruise.com and click on No. XX." My daughter interrupted and said it was nearly time to leave for their dinner invite. "Well, just try it once and see if you think it's beatable." She called me back in three minutes and said it was done. OMG! She solved the Coke puzzle while she was telling me about the Hs. I told her to take a look at the flags. "Gotta go, Grandma. Mom insists." All right. Do it when you get back.

While she was out dining with the millionaires from Wyoming, I figured out how to beat the glasses. I stopped reasoning on which one to click on to empty and clicked my mouse like a maniac without a brain.

I got a call at 9. It was from my son. He was trading in one boat for a bigger one with beds and a cabin I could sit in to get away from the sprays of water. It was big enough now he could go cobia fishing in the gulf with it. Did the sweeps time this call, too, so that I would be lured into an adventure in the sea? As the contest states, "Why not?"

At midnight, I got a call from my granddaughter. She solved the last square! Wow. I had tried to beat that puzzle all evening without success. "So, Grandma," she asked, "what can we win?" "I'm not too sure," I said, but mostly cruises to the Caribbean and Mexico. There's also one to Alaska, but if we win that one, I'm not going. I can't imagine being around glaciers." "Me either," she said, even though she lives in the heart of Colorado ski country. Goodnight, and great job.

Confessions of a Sweepaholic

My name is Ann and I'm a Sweepaholic. I wasn't always like this. I used to play Yahoo games. I was able to limit myself to mainly Bejeweled and Tiptop. I could stop after two hours. Then people started laughing at me for playing games, told me what a waste of my good brain that was. Sure, I said, but it might keep Alzheimer's at bay (but not RSI at my keyboard). I got so good. Sometimes the game would take so long, I'd have to take a nap and continue later. I could play for money, I reasoned, but I wasn't that good. I needed to direct my energy into something that could yield a buck or two while wearing pajama bottoms and a long-sleeved shirt.

That's when the neuron telling me to make money and the neuron wanting money to yield to my granddaughter's wish for an iPod Touch collided, and I googled. I've written about how I found Walmart's "11 Moms" each giving away an iTouch. It was like a free sample of crack cocaine, introducing me to the seriously Type A world of Mom bloggers. I was a mom like them 30 years ago. I qualified.

Then I won something. It wasn't one of the iPods, but it was a Flip camcorder, and I know my granddaughter would love it. She was elated. I was hooked. Then I won $14 in Kraft coupons, one of which was for Triscuits, my all time favorite cracker. My favorites bar became peppered with daily entries: iPod 1-5, Prius 1-3, a year's supply of Annie's, Olive Garden's trip to Italy. My next win was a $700 gift card to Dick's Sporting Goods. Hurray - a bike for both Teresa and Mikela and some boating items for my son. This is cool. Next I want to win a designer handbag for Jodi, who's on a limited budget, and maybe a watch for myself (my Timex keeps ticking but it's falling apart). Jodi also wants me to win a trip to NYC, and I would enjoy that, too.

I've never been into fashion or makeup or designer this or that, but I just had to watch the Confessions of Shopaholic movie. I see how similar we are - she maxes out her credit card and I max out my entries to win the same things. The difference is she wants all this stuff for herself. I just want to pass these items on to my friends and family members who actually love this stuff. In other words, I enter giveaways to give away. I love it! But I'll have to stop discussing this for now. Madberries and March Madness sweeps are calling me.

HARD TIMES

I was raised by a generation that went through the Depression, by parents who worried that I would get polio and were fearful our days were numbered by a nuclear blast from Moscow. When my great-grandmother spotted a safety pin on the floor, she would pick it up and add it to the string of pins already attached to her dress. She rolled string into a ball for future recycling.

As a 12-year-old, I wondered if I could shoot someone trying to break into our fallout shelter (if, indeed, we ever built one). During the moon landing, my grandmother insisted she saw the moon turn blood red. There were winter months when my father, a construction worker, could not find work and I overheard my parents worrying about paying the mortgage on our $12,000 post-war prefab in Detroit. There was some minimal unemployment compensation back then, but no food stamps, and I don't ever recall my dad mentioning health insurance.

Mostly, though, I was oblivious to their concerns and challenges. Kmart was new and amazing, and I had bright dresses for school. My lunch box always had treats, and I was an all-A student who actually loved learning. My dad and I created a beautiful garden in the backyard, with tomatoes that had a flavor I haven't tasted in decades. He built a garage from wood left over from the jobs he was on and refinished the attic so I could have my own room.

On the weekends, we took picnics to parks with lakes for swimming or ventured to a spot of curiosity. Yates cider mill was about the most fascinating place I'd ever seen. Thousands of bees swarmed around the rotting apple mash, piled high in a pit you could look into. Dozens of apple trees of many varieties were there for the picking (even if we could only afford half a bushel). But the grandest moment was the free glass of ice cold cider coupled with a 5-cent donut lifted from a vat of hot lard and sugared.

Thrift stores like the Salvation Army were magical back then, although there was a stigma attached to going to them. We had our own code name for them - "Sallie's" (from "Salvation"). The main Sallie's in the heart of Detroit was a three-story warehouse. I always headed for the book section after a tour of the furniture (so many curved glass, heavy dark pieces that nobody wanted) but fascinating to me, aging oil paintings of obscure topics and bulky, fascinating jewelry so out of fashion. I always came home with a box of books, mostly Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, but often books from obscure series about girls like the Bobsey twins who were young when my mother was young. The books were a dime apiece, and my father bartered with the old clerk to give him a deal. He was determined that I would go to college and I don't think I ever spent a dollar that I received as a gift - it all went into the bank for college.

I seldom think of these years. I did get two college degrees. Art, theater and literature were the focus of my studies, so money or the lack thereof remained part of my lifestyle, but it was one that I chose, not one that I was forced to struggle within. In 2006, however, I began having a deja vu experience from my childhood. I was a news copy editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, which was purchased by Hearst a couple of years earlier. The managers, who had paid a whopping $66 million to the Fang family to take the Examiner off their hands and who had merged the Chronicle and Examiner staffs into one humongous newsroom, started complaining about huge losses - a million dollars a month or some such unbelievable figure! They needed to trim the staff and offered handome buyouts to anyone who would volunteer to leave. I was 59 at the time and could take an early pension, along with the buyout. I decided to return to the house I owned in Pensacola, Fla.

I had a pretty nice 401(k) and transferred it to a Treasury money market, deciding to forego all the quick profits I was getting from the high-risk stocks I'd been purchasing, now favoring of preservation. I suppose it was the Depression-era influence kicking in, and in view of the stock market today, I'm glad I thought that way a few years ago. I still get very meager returns, but I still have my principal.

Last week, the Chronicle email staff basket (which I still belong to) started perking again. Hearst is insisting that it needs to lay off 175 of the 225 Newspaper Guild staff members, and if the union doesn't agree to it, the paper will lay off all 225 members. Imagine a newspaper that's been around since 1865 and the heart of the heart that everyone leaves in San Francisco (according to the song) not having any newsroom or copy editors or photographers? These are not people 3 years from early Social Security. These are young people with kids who may soon find themselves in mortgages they cannot pay looking for jobs that don't exist. Unlike my dad, they will have good unemployment compensation for a year, continued medical insurance, job training and food stamps if they need it. But their houses in the Bay Area are $300,000, their gas is at times $4.00 (not 25 cents) a gallon and their car payments can run $300 (my dad's new Ford cost $2,000 total). We didn't have credit cards to max out.

My first early Social Security check will arrive in July. I told the application taker that every check that comes in will be like winning the lottery. I don't know if it will be there for the rest of my life, but I plan to use what comes in as wisely as I can.

There is an old blues singer that laments, "If I didn't have bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all." Today's blues singer might complain, "If we didn't have hard times, we wouldn't have any times at all."