Rosy Maple Moth
Rosy Maple Moths are the smallest of the great silk moths, found from southeastern Canada down the Atlantic coast to Florida and into Texas. Their eggs are 1/20in. ovules with smooth yellow outsides.
Their larvae are known as greenstriped mapleworms, which grow to 2 inches in length and vary in color through their five instar stages, from pale yellow to green with striping, while their head changes from black to yellow to red. Adult moths range from 1.25 to 2 inches long, with a woolly body and bright pink and yellow wings, sometimes ranging to cream. The mapleworm’s primary host is all species of maple.
Large hatches are capable of defoliating trees, but in normal growing years maples recover well. Adults have no mouthparts or digestive tracts and have short-lived breeding cycles. Their flamboyant coloration may by turns blend well with maple samara (winged seed) bunches or give predators the false impression that they are poisonous. Their main predators are small birds.
Learn more here: https://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species/Dryocampa-rubicunda
What do you love about this particular creature?
What do they reveal to you about God and our faith?
At 11 years old, on the closing night of a camping trip, I went apart to the edge of the ring of campfire light and looked down into the little leftover red and white checked French fry dish that contained an unexpected treasure. There in fuzzy jeweltones sat what I could only imagine was a rare vagrant blown from across the mountains, across the sea, or from another world. The moth’s pink and yellow body and feathered antennae shivered slightly, and the beauty of that tiny movement blew all other thoughts from my mind.
In the 1970s, the Rev. Jesse Jackson popularized the Rev. William Borders Sr.’s 1940s free verse poem “I am -Somebody”. He found a ready audience, from Sesame Street to the Wattstax Music Festival, because Borders’ poem guides us in celebrating (even when others will not) the power of being our own selves fully and completely. Jackson understood that all change and transformation flow from a foundational identity and courage as God’s children. When I first beheld a Rosy Maple Moth, I experienced this “Somebody-ness” in the wild. I sometimes think of it when donning my courage or exuberance.
Author - Stephen MacAusland
Reed Loy lives and pastors in the humbly meandering Contoocook River basin in New Hampshire, and exults in river baptisms, running amok with his family, and the long drone of a cicada in high summer.
Infinite Creator God, thank you for all the living things you have made. You delight in giving humanity gift upon gift from your imagination and love. Help us to learn wise ways to protect and celebrate your creatures, human, tamed, and wild; that we may share peacefully and completely in your kindness and agape love with all creation. May we be a blessing to all that you have created as we glorify you. Amen.
Prayer by the Rev. Diana Rogers