Moths of the Limberlost: A Book About Limberlost Cabin

by Gene Stratton-Porter

The eggs on the floor and curtains were guarded with care. They were dotted around promiscuously, and at first were clear and of amber colour, but as the little caterpillars grew in them, they showed a red line three fourths of the way around the rim, and became slightly depressed in the middle. The young emerged in thirteen days. They were nearly half an inch long, and were yellow with black lines. They began the task of eating until they reached the pupa state, by turning on their shells and devouring all of them to the glue by which they were fastened.

They were given their choice of oak, alder, sumac, elm, cherry, and hickory. The majority of them seemed to prefer the hickory. They moulted on the fifth day for the first time, and changed to a brown colour. Every five or six days they repeated the process, growing larger and of stronger colour with each moult, and developing a covering of long white hairs. Part of these moulted four times, others five.

At past six weeks of age they were exactly as Mr. Eisen had described them to me. Those I kept in confinement pupated on a bed of baked gravel, in a tin bucket. It is imperative to bake any earth or sand used for them to kill pests invisible to the eye, that might bore into the pupa cases and destroy the moths.

I watched the transformation with intense interest. After the caterpillars had finished eating they travelled in search of a place to burrow for a day or two. Then they gave up, and lay quietly on the sand. The colour darkened hourly, the feet and claspers seemed to draw inside, and one morning on going to look there were some greenish brown pupae. They shone as if freshly varnished, as indeed they were, for the substance provided to facilitate the emergence of the pupae from the caterpillar skins dries in a coating, that helps to harden the cases and protect them. These pupae had burst the skins at the thorax, and escaped by working the abdomen until they lay an inch or so from the skins.

What a "cast off garment" those skins were! Only the frailest outside covering, complete in all parts, and rapidly turning to a dirty brown. The pupae were laid away in a large box having a glass lid. It was filled with baked sand, covered with sphagnum moss, slightly dampened occasionally, and placed where it was cool, but never at actual freezing point. The following spring after the delight of seeing them emerge, they were released, for I secured a male to complete my collection a few days later, and only grew the caterpillars to prove it possible.

There was a carnival in the village, and, for three nights the streets were illuminated brightly from end to end, to the height of Ferris wheels and diving towers. The lights must have shone against the sky for miles around, for they drew from the Limberlost, from the Canoper, from Rainbow Bottom, and the Valley of the Wood Robin, their winged creatures of night.

I know Emperors appear in these places in my locality, for the caterpillars feed on leaves found there, and enter the ground to pupate; so of course the moth of June begins its life in the same location. Mr. Pettis found the mated pair he brought to me, on a bush at the edge of a swamp. They also emerge in cities under any tree on which their caterpillars feed. Once late in May, in the corner of a lichen-covered, old snake fence beside the Wabash on the Shimp farm, I made a series of studies of the home life of a pair of ground sparrows. They had chosen for a location a slight depression covered with a rank growth of meadow grass. Overhead wild plum and thorn in full bloom lay white-sheeted against the blue sky; red bud spread its purple haze, and at a curve, the breast of the river gleamed white as ever woman's; while underfoot the grass was obscured with masses of wild flowers.

An unusually fine cluster of white violets attracted me as I worked around the birds, so on packing at the close of the day I lifted the plant to carry home for my wild flower bed. Below a few inches of rotting leaves and black mould I found a lively pupa of the Yellow Emperor.

So these moths emerge and deposit their eggs in the swamps, forests, beside the river and wherever the trees on which they feed grow. When the serious business of life is over, attracted by strong lights, they go with other pleasure seeking company, and grace society by their royal presence.

I could have had half a dozen fine Imperialis moths during the three nights of the carnival, and fluttering above buildings many more could be seen that did not descend to our reach. Raymond had such a busy time capturing moths he missed most of the joys of the carnival, but I truly think he liked the chase better. One he brought me, a female, was so especially large that I took her to the Cabin to be measured, and found her to be six and three quarter inches, and of the lightest yellow of any specimen I have seen. Her wings were quite ragged. I imagined she had finished laying her eggs, and was nearing the end of life, hence she was not so brilliant as a newly emerged specimen. The moth proved this theory correct by soon going out naturally.