R. K. Cook's video: Alienesque Tobacco Hornworm Is Ready for His Closeup

HANK WILDING'S JOURNAL: Tomato and Tobacco Hornworms are the bane of tomato lovers, but I find their extraterrestrial appearance oddly appealing. They remind me of something H. R. Giger might have dreamed up for the "Alien" franchise, or a refugee from David Lynch's "Dune." As a Southern boy, there's nothing I love better than a tomato and onion sandwich made with home-grown tomatoes — a summertime treat that cain't be beat. But I'm willing to share my maters with this much-maligned bug. My two tomato plants — one Celebrity, one Better Boy — were lackluster producers this year, but the crop of Tobacco Hornworms was spectacular. I've never had the heart to terminate them. I snip off a section of tomato plant, with the worm attached, and relocate them. To me, they're far less pesky than the bolder than bold deer that scarfed down several feet of vine until my homemade "scaredeers" and peppermint extract combined to deter them. (Peeing around the plants seemed to help, too. Did I just admit that?) Not to mention the rabbits that took great big bites out of the bottoms of several tomatoes. Also, the Tobacco Hornworm is the larva of the Carolina Sphinx, a beauteous moth that I've seen galumphing around my porch lights and feeding on my moonflower blossoms. To me, that's an excellent reason to tolerate a few hornworms, as long as you don't let them completely defoliate your mater plants. The Tobacco Hornworm, and its cousin, the Tomato Hornworm, have it hard enough without us humans squishing them. Species of braconid wasps lay their eggs under the skin of hornworms. When the eggs hatch, the larvae eat the hornworm alive from the inside out. (Now that sounds like something from a David Lynch movie!) The mature larvae chomp their way to the hornworm's surface and spin tiny little white cocoons on the insect's body. In its weakened state the hornworm is doomed and won't be chewing on any more mater plants; when the pupating wasp larvae eventually hatch, the hornworm's history. What a gruesome way to go! (There's a young Tobacco Hornworm in the video infested with these cocoons.) A lot of folks think the spike, or horn, on the hornworm's butt — that gives the bug its name — means they're poisonous. Not so. The worms are harmless unless you're a tomato or tobacco plant. The Tobacco Hornworms I examined this year exhibited spasmodic defensive behavior — shown in the video — and also make weird clicking sounds with their mandibles to discourage predators. Regrettably, I couldn't capture that cool and rather disconcerting sound on audio. Now you know everything I know about hornworms, which ain't much. Want to know more? Maybe you should get out of that chair and go wilding!