Get out of here

A sort of reverse ugly-duckling. This little beauty (it's about 1 - 1.5cm long) will over-winter in its own private, self-build 'hibernaculum' (I want one!). In spring it wakes up as a very hungry caterpillar. Generally, it does not eat apple, pears, plums, strawberries, oranges, chocolate cake, ice-cream cone, pickle, Swiss cheese, salami, lollipops, cherry pie, sausage, cupcakes or watermelon. According to one source, however, it does eat the leaves of Japanese knot-weed, which ought to make it a celebrity and lifestyle influencer

Next summer it will grow to four times its current size, before pupating and emerging, not as beautiful butterfly, but as a rather nondescript white moth, with very hairy legs, which probably creep some people out. It is a classic night-flying moth attracted to light. In some parts of the world it is called a 'Swan Moth'. Us boring Brits call it a 'Yellow-tail' because it has yellow hairs at the end of its abdomen that are used (shed, I assume) as protection for its eggs

I've confidently specified what it doesn't eat, but it must have come into the house, where MrsM found it, on apples, pears or plums - today's harvest, so I wonder if it has read the book. I read about it after I had returned it to the garden. The hairs, I discovered, are irritating and "should only be handled with extreme care". Oops