"Hey, are you me, or am I you"? "Tag, you're it". My Tiger is so big right now, the leaf is about to break, I fear! Just one made it out of the 5 eggs I had. He has that leaf so scrunched up about him, it looks like a wad of green paper. He is on my Wild Cherry. Congrats on your beautiful female, Sandy! I need to check my pecan trees. I have a couple that are getting big, and I don't think I can reach the top branches on it, but maybe they will be nice and lay eggs down low. Elderberry is also used, and I have a stand of it, too. The hail did some damage, but I have lots and lots of fragrant blooms on it this year. Good job! Susan

They eclose w/ fully formed ova but need a male to fertilize them within 3 or 4 days or they start laying anyway. If they are unmated they'll lay just a few eggs at a time but the eggs will eventually collapse. Once she is mated she will stop calling and lay all her eggs relatively quickly. Put her somewhere in the open up high where she can catch the breeze. My Hyalophora cecropia start calling just after sunset (around 8:30 here) and stop around 11 o'clock. I've seen males come in the morning just before dawn every once in a while so they must call again then too. When they call they are actually releasing pheromones on the wind. The pheromones can travel a mile or more so you would have to have a male within that calling distance downwind. On still nights you might not get any males. On a night with a steady light breeze you might get a bunch. If she eclosed Tuesday night she'll probably live 'til next Wed. or Sat. depending on how fat and healthy she was as a cat. Good luck!

On Thursday, a friend called me. She told me she had a big imperial cat for me. I rushed over and got it. It was eating white pine. I put it on one of my pines inside a rearing sleeve. When I checked it on Sunday, something had eaten its way into the sleeve and the imperial was gone :( Many moons ago, I had lots of cecropia cats and an upcoming vacation (don't remember anymore how many days I was going to be gone). Decided I had enough cocoons already so I did not bother getting a caterpillar sitter. I let all the cats go on the lilac I had been feeding them. Figured I'd reclaim them when I got home. When I returned, there was lots of frass on the ground but not a single caterpillar. I figure some predator found them and a feeding frenzy occurred.

Sweetgum will definitely work for both. It is my favorite tree to use since the cuttings hold up well in water and it smells good. But if you watch what I write, I don't use it for either moth. My lunas and regals plow through my sweetgum supply so I use other hostplants with the cecropias and prometheas. AFAIK, mulberry will not work. You did not say where you are at in Florida. Prometheas usually are not much of a Florida moth. Much more common where it is cooler. Most records are from around Tallahassee. Their relative the sweetbay silkmoth is a Florida resident.