Spodoptera exigua: What I hate most is people calling me a “caterpillar”!

When the larvae of the spiral moth sprout, you can see a cocoon on the trunk. If you touch it with your fingers, you can hear the rustling sound inside. That is the pupa of my larva from last year. It is like a sleeping bag, tightly sealed. No matter the severe cold and snow in winter or the violent storms in spring and summer, the sleeping bag is filled with a silk quilt, which is warm. If it were not for reincarnation, I would sleep in it for 49 days.

When peach blossoms smile in the spring breeze, I gently open my sleeping bag, take off my pupa, and transform into a moth. Taking advantage of the night, I quietly fly to the woods to eat honey and drink dew, replenish nutrition and strengthen my body. After 5-7 days, I choose the back of the Chinese toon leaves to lay eggs. Let me tell you in a low voice that I can produce more than 100 eggs in my lifetime. Each one is round, white and plump, very beautiful. Fate arranges me to leave the children quickly; really, I really don’t want to leave this paradise on earth forest area and the children I have never met, and it is a farewell to the forest forever.

However, in the season of pink and apricot, the eggs scrambled to break out of the shells, wearing yellow and black-spotted flowery clothes, and feasting on the tender leaves of the Chinese toon tree. When I was young, I concentrated on the leaves to eat the flesh of the leaves; when I grew up, I scattered to eat the leaves. I was very powerful and could eat all the leaves of the whole plant; but I was also the most timid. If there was a little wind and rain hitting the leaves, I would jump down the Chinese toon tree to escape and shed my hair when I was shocked or frightened. After 7-8 days, I left the crown leaves and climbed up the trunk. According to the genetic requirements of my mother, I bit the tender skin on the branches and spit out silk to stick together, forming a thin silky gray cocoon to pupate. The cocoon is mostly tightly attached to the branches of 2-3 year old young trees, and the pupae begin to sleep inside, hehehe. Then the new generation will reincarnate and pupate to make cocoons to overwinter. Hehehe, after talking for so long, most people know me and call me caterpillar; in fact, forestry expert Wan Shaoxia said that my full name is Spodoptera exigua, also known as the stinking toon moth.

(Wan Shaoxia, Wugang Forestry Station, Henan Province, professor-level senior engineer)