I love them but I pick them off desirable plants and put them on tomatoes that I grow specifically for them. The only hornworm that I don't like are the catalpa worms and that's because I get them by the hundreds, maybe thousands, yuck!

Your tomato/tobacco hornworm will eat the leaves of tomato, preferrably, though they can be found on other members of the Solanaceae family such as pepper and potato, though grudgingly. There are a few native weeds in this plant family, but you would have to look them up since I don't know where you live. Most of those plants are considered toxic....Solanaceae is the Nightshade family. That's pretty much it. They are not generalists but very host specific. The lids of water are useless. Spray the leaves occasionally with water. Captive caterpillars often succumb to disease if in the hands of someone who has not learned the rudiments of caring for them. That would be most of us! To go along with your philosophy, releasing them into the 'wild' without an appropriate food source would be cruel. They would suffer a slow death of starvation. I suggest that you either sacrifice your own tomato plant, or get some more tomato plants, or serve them up to the birds in your garden by placing them in the bird bath or feeder. That would be a good thing to do, right? In nature, there are many pests and parasites that help control these particular caterpillars. Very few of the many that are hatched actually make it to adulthood.

We found them again this year . We lost a plant or two last year to them and were waiting for them to show up.. We had just said.. Hey, no sign of our green friends yet.. a little early as the next morning the tip top of a green pepper was cleaned off and just a few tomato leaves. We found about 10 and after a powder dusting, we found more that had dropped. We throw them over our fence to an empty dirt lot.. wonder if they can make it back to our greenery?? anyone know? My son just told me he saw about 8 on the patio in the afternoon.. so we need to recheck for eggs and more of the buggers. What a pain. I hate that they can do so much damage so fast and in a small garden like ours, we would have little left. Ironically, the green pepper we got about 10 small peppers off of this year was the plant they ate last year and the first one we found them on this year.

justintx, Thanks, but that isn't a black widow. I come across them from time to time, call me crazy but I have an agreement with them; they don't bother me and I don't bother them. I even come across a rattler every once in a while, I leave them alone too. Look closely at the legs and eyes. Also unlike the Redback spider native to Australia the Black Widow's red hourglass marking is on the underside. I did find an image of a Redback dining with a Tomato Horn Worm (http://www.spiderzrule.com/rb6.jpg). I have not found its ID yet but I have been looking. I may have to seek the knowledge of an expert Entomologist at UT or A&M.