Hangin' With the Luna Moth

I had never seen a Luna Moth before my son pointed one out to me. That was one of the moments when it has become clear that I missed out on a lot in high school. My son's favorite class was AP Biology and almost daily he would come home with a new story. Can you believe they even had a pet snake in class? And he touched it? Ugh!!!!

He has always been an avid "bug" watcher, not a collector mind you, that would require killing the bugs. No, he likes to watch them live and study them up close. He has taught me so much about insects and animals and I must say that what I used to totally ignore, I now find fascinating. He really is like a walking encyclopedia!

When we go to the zoo, we never run from animal to animal screeching. No, we stop at every enclosure and watch. "Watch what?" you ask. Well, that's just it. We just observe every detail, every movement, every stripe variation. We can easily spend an hour in the Herpetarium. So many frogs, so little time!

Several years ago, we made a trip to the zoo just to see the new Butterfly House. We crept thought it inch by inch discovering dozens of beautiful butterflies.

And that's where it happened! He spotted the elusive Luna Moth. How he saw him among all the leaves, I will never know, but you would have thought he had just been named a multi-million dollar lottery winner. He didn't make a sound, he just stared, unblinking while I saw nothing but leaves. I followed my son's eyes and finally, there, I saw the weird shaped "leaf".

See if you can find him in the picture above!