The Hop Dog

 The Pale Tussock is one of the characterful moths of late Spring and early Summer, especially the female with her woolly breeches and well-executed version of yoga's Swan Pose. Our grandchildren found the one above on their door this year. Two weeks later, on a visit here, they discovered a fine cocoon in our treehouse, tucked into the V of an old catapult, a souvenir which I brought back years ago from making a radio  programme in Hannibal, Missouri, the hometown of Samuel Clements, aka Mark Twain.

The slumbering moth was naturally Christened 'Mark Twain' and eight weeks later, he emerged; a nice male of the species. He was luckier than a second Pale Tussock which my granddaughter found late last year as a caterpillar. These are fine-looking creatures with tussocks of hair which account for the moth's name - and which also cause rashes in some people, leading to the nickname 'hop dog' in the Kentish hop fields where they were often found by pickers.

The bright colours led my granddaughter to call her caterpillar 'Neon'.  He or she chrysalised after spinning a cocoon but remained sleeping inside well after the hatching of Mark Twain. My granddaughter was concerned early one but I counselled patience. By late June, however, I agreed with her that something might have gone wrong and we took a careful look.  The cocoon was snugly tucked in a bug box lent by a patient schoolfriend who self-sacrificingly had been obliged to do without it all that time.

My granddaughter's premonition was sadly right. Inside the cocoon, along with the untransformed last stage of the caterpillar, were the smaller cases of ichneumon parasite wasps. They too seemed to have perished which was a sort of consolation.  After all, Charles Darwin himself said of the ichneumon: “I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.”  A sad lesson which our young scientist, who is no Creationist, thoughtfully took aboard.