July 18, 2007 - What in the world is a Pandora Sphinx?

We were getting ready to leave the house to go to the grocery store the other day. On this particular day the van was backed into the garage so Nicholas was on the garage window side of the van. Right before we pulled out of the garage, Nicholas says "Mom, What's that?" and points to the window sill. I took a quick look, and at first glance I thought it was a very weird looking creature and it gave me the heeby-jeebies. I got out of the van and went to take a closer look and then thought it was a dried up leaf that had somehow managed to get caught on the sill. But, as I got even closer I realized it was a HUGE moth. The wing-span on this moth was between 3 and 3 1/2 inches and one of the ugliest things I've ever seen. Needless to say, this moth was not going to fit through the tip of the bug vacuum. So I grabbed a gladware container and managed to collect it for a time. That afternoon, we got on-line and struggled to find a website that would help us identify what we had caught. We finally came upon whatsthatbug.com There are some really awesome pictures of moths and other bugs and after going through many pages, we finally found our bug....it is a Pandora Sphinx Moth (sometimes called a camo moth). Several posts indicated that others have mistaken this moth for a dried up leaf as well. This was definately our bug find of the summer so far....we did let it go that evening, but have some cool pictures to preserve the memory.