I've seen this moth a few times while chasing butterflies in my yard, but this is the first time it sat still for pictures. Then I looked it up, and found that one of the weeds I've been mowing around is it's host plant. So I looked at it more carefully, and wow, there were two caterpillars!

This Utetheisa Moth uses Rattlebox as it's host plant.

I raised the caterpillars inside so could get photos of their cocoon to share here.

Well... I had two caterpillars, but I ended up with only one. The other escaped. I had them nice and safe in a bug box, but when I went to give them fresh Rattlebox and clean their container, there were NO caterpillars in it!

Ooops. The rest of that story is on Raising Caterpillars Page One.

Fortunately, my daughter recovered one stray caterpillar on walkabout in her room. She'd argue the 'fortunately'! Long haired caterpillars are like long haired cats; wet them down and there isn't much there. These little crawlers were tiny enough to squeeze through the air gaps in my bug box lid, but they didn't LOOK that small!