The Early Worm

I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

In the afternoons, I like to walk down the rows of the garden and just observe.  If you aren't watchful, you may miss harvesting a cucumber until it is overripe and yellow.  You may fail to see that your beans need watering.  You have to have a keen eye.  Sometimes things you need to see in order to take action are camouflaged, hidden to the eye.

While walking down the row of Cherokee Purple tomatoes, I noticed that one of the tomato leaves had been clipped off.  It appeared to be done by a very hungry pest.  I had my suspicions as to who did this, but I had to find the culprit to make a positive identification.

Tomato leaves clipped off

Sometimes you have to pause and do your best job at being a detective.  The tomato leaves directly below the leaf that had been eaten had a tell tale sign.  Look at the poop on the leaves.  We are gathering evidence at a good pace now.

I followed the eaten leaves, moving slowly with my eyes, knowing at this point, that I was looking for a perpetrator that was green, colored this way in order to blend in to the foliage on the tomato plant.  Aha!  Found this big, fat dude, and it was just as I expected...

A tomato hornworm!  Can you see in the photo below why he is called a "horn" worm?  This guy is the larvae of a hawkmoth.

He looks frightening, but he doesn't scare me much.  I picked him up with my thumb and forefinger and tossed him over the garden fence.  The big, fat, green worm made a nice meal for a Barred Rock Hen that came across it.  The hen grabbed it quickly and took off running, wishing to go to a quiet place and enjoy this delectable meal.

I continued to look through the tomato leaves and found two more tomato worms that quickly became tasty morsels for the chickens to snack on.

The early bird got the early worm.