#miller moth

[somewheredownthesidewalk]

May 25, 2023

Albuquerque, New Mexico

[cemeteryscorpion]

moths

[monsterritory]

Have you ever had a moth fly into your room late at night 

[moth-a-day]

Miller moth

Img credit: kunc.org

[onenicebugperday]

@mother-entropy​ submitted: this beautiful friend was found by a buddy of mine in Sydney, Australia and he asked me to forward the pics to you for identification!

A beautiful friend indeed! Looks like a miller moth in the family Cossidae, most likely in the genus Endoxyla. Some of the species can be very hard to tell apart without a closer look or sometimes even dissection, but I would guess probably either Endoxyla lituratus or Endoxyla encalypti, which as far as I know don’t have common names in English. The caterpillars of miller moths are tree borers and look like big grubs :)

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Doodled some moth pixies

(click for better resolution)

The paper wasn't doing what I wanted but I think overall they came out ok

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So, let’s talk about moths.

You may know that I like insects more than most people.  I mean that in both senses: I like insects more than average people do.  I also like insects more than I like most people.  Alas, there are exceptions.

In late April, we noticed a few large, weirdly obnoxious moths in the house.  By obnoxious, I mean these were the kind of moths that wanted to fly right at your face, all the time.  By large, I mean that they were over an inch long and very juicy and sticky if you stepped on one by accident.

They were miller moths, the adult form of the army cutworm.  Look them up; they are famously delightful to have around the house.

By early May, a few moths had turned into a few dozen, and then a few hundred.  At some point I stopped counting.  There were moths in the medicine cabinet, the kitchen drawers, the pillowcases, and the shower.  There were dozens of moths clustered on the dining room walls and ceiling.

It was very unpleasant.

We vacuumed some of the moths, but there were too many.  Specifically, they gummed up the little door that keeps vacuumed items inside the mini-vac, and started marching right out again.  (Startling!)

Inlandwest started looking for ideas about how to trap moths, and found that they really like blacklight.  (Who doesn’t?)  By May 9, we were trapping at least 50 moths each night in a bucket in the dining room, and then releasing them in the morning.  But more moths kept coming, and finally one of my coworkers mentioned that in her family’s orchard, they use a light over a bucket of soapy water to catch night-time pests.

I hope you never need to try this at home, but it works like a grim, watery charm.  We caught at least 100 moths each night for more than a week.

Finally the number of moths began to decline, and we thought it might be time to stop trapping them. 

That turned out to be wise, because our old nemeses, false chinch bugs, love blacklight even more than miller moths do.  They love it so much that they will come from miles around to crawl through one’s window screens and bask in its creepy glow.

Ah, springtime.  So much life!

(On the bright side, all of this was a solid distraction from the state of the world.)

Cochise County, Arizona, April to May 2020.

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