Finally one of the cocoons hatched yesterday. It’s a female, so I’m keeping her for a few days hoping she’ll attract a mate. I’ll try to get some eggs before I release her.

Here she is – just after emerging

She hatched yesterday afternoon while we were still at the farm. It would have been nice if she had hatched earlier, so I could have tried to attract a mate at the farm. But since it was the end of the day and we were heading home, I brought her back to the city. I left her ouside in her cage last night, but haven’t seen any males yet. Maybe that will happen tonight.

Today I went outside to check on her, and she was gone! She had pushed the top of the cage up, and slipped out. I was pretty sure she hadn’t gone far, so I checked around the yard and found her. She had only gone about 5 feet from the cage, and was sitting in the garden on a leaf. I put her back – this time with a weight on top of the cage.

Here’s a photo of the cocoon after she emerged – there’s a tiny hole in the top where she got out.

And here are a couple more photos – on my hand and on a leaf. In the daylight she moves very slowly and isn’t very interested in flying, so it’s easy to take pictures.

There’s sort of a sad ending to this story. Late today – Wednesday, June 15 – she started dumping eggs – lots of eggs. Since I know she hasn’t mated, I’m sure that what happened is that I didn’t notice her for a few days in the cage, so she was actually quite a bit older than I realized. She’d been waiting around for a mate for a long time, and when none came, she started dumping eggs.

When I realized what was going on, I let her go. I put her in a thicket of Elderberry so she could hide from the sun – Mike saw her fly out of our yard a little later. I hope she survives and has success finding a mate to fertilize the rest of her eggs.