Tomato Hornworm

     It is no pleasant thing to be picking handfuls of lovely cherry tomatoes and find the huge ugly larva of a spotted hawkmoth, better known as a tomato hornworm, lurking on a stem. Bad enough that this squishy fellow was as big as my pinky but he was also covered with what I assumed were white eggs. Alarmed, I disposed of him as quickly as possible. That was a mistake. Later I learned that the white "eggs" were actually the cocoons of the braconid wasp, parasites that would have destroyed the worm. I have found only one more hornworm in the past week and he also was infected with the parasite. I placed the worm and a tomato plant branch in a big jar and donated it to the local science teacher!