Mr. Caterpillar

We discovered this HUGE caterpillar last month.  It was happily munching away on my tomato plant/leaves:

It's called a caterpillar Hornworm.  The "horn" at the very end is actually harmless:

We decided to keep it for a little while.  This thing had such an appetite and of course that meant lots of poop too! Yuck!

Mr. Caterpillar was getting even bigger! About 2 1/2 inches long.  Sheesh!

And then, for whatever reason - it didn't eat as much anymore and it started to turn brown.  Graham and Charlie kept saying that we would just feed it to the birds.  Hmmm..., well after a few more days, I decided to just put him under the lemon tree.  It crawled underneath a leave and the next day, I couldn't find it anymore.  Hopefully it's not chewing on another veggie/plant??!  Maybe I should have fed it to the birds :-P