Unless you have some that aren't "hyper-technical" (I may have coined a word here) then it would be better for them to go to professionals. I like books with more than just a pretty picture, like information about preferred host plants, information about raising the cats successfully, interesting information about lep/cat behavior, without going into extreme detail, like this or that caterpillar does better at 500' elevation than 600' elevation, if you know what I mean. Of course, pretty pictures don't hurt! :) Sherry

KC, Having written and published a specific work myself I understand the time, effort and expense involved in not only travel for research and field work, but writing, editing, etc and publication costs IF all are paid for by the author(s) themselves (more about that later). Quality color photographs are very expensive in books - the higher the quality the more expensive. Even so the prices asked for many books is ridiculous, and is all about the profit that can be made on them. I covered ALL of the expenses and did all the work for my project myself, and gave all the copies away at no cost (all 5 printings). My purpose was to record and share (which did add some limited notoriety as well), but it was not to make money on. While some of the books I refered to (and many others) are spectacular as photo albums, did require a massive effort on the part of authors if they did the field work themselves, and may contain enough technical information to help offset their cost, they are still overpriced IMO. That later part... most are written by authors with institutional backing where most if not all expenses are covered by their backer. Brings to mind when I was picked for a special team to go do lepidopteran field work in China for a couple of months in the 90's, and couldn't go because I did not have those ties and could not justify the expenses out of pocket when I still had a son to put through college starting in a couple of years. Unfortunately some of the early works and discoveries have been lost in later references, but they still hold water and so still have value. Dozens of my research papers, books and other references are as old as the hills, but I'd rather refer to them than a lot of the stuff being published today that is often just copied work that was only done for the notoriety, the almighty buck or to record it (with notoriety as a by product). Teaching from a reference by a staff member is nothing new, still goes on today. A nemisis of what is supposedly called higher education. It's not right, but it still prevails. Larry

Would you look at those little slippies he has on? The larvae has one of the worst stings!!!!

Well, I'm almost afraid to say this but I haven't seen a moth in 2 weeks. Of course I still have my HVAC registers covered with insect screen but I haven't seen any behind the screen either, as I was seeing before. This happy state of affairs could be due to one or more of the following factors: 1. When the pest control guy applied a little bit of spray in about four places (without drilling the walls... heck, he hasn't even called me back about that...what am I paying these people for anyway??), by incredible good luck the spray happened to hit exactly where the larva were (yeah right). 2. My sealing up of every opening I could find from those two walls into the house, was a better job than I thought. 3. The moths are "between flights"; meaning that one generation is finished, and I won't see any more until the next generation of larva pupate into adult fliers. That could take anywhere from 3 weeks to almost a year. About the pheromone traps, when the pest control guys first came out they did try those, although they explained that normally they only work on the smaller moth species such as meal moths, clothes moths, and such. The big brown suckers usually aren't attracted to them. I think they were correct because I had adults flying in the same rooms as the pheromone traps and none went anywhere near them. Mona, how are you doing? Who is winning, Team Mothra or Team Charlotte? (okay I read 'Charlotte's Web' a long time ago but I still don't like spiders much)