You can boo if you want to, but the local wild life has to eat to survive too, owls, hawks, foxes, coyotes would all benefit from a healthy meal of duck. I know it sounds cold-hearted, but remember that natures balance depends on the predators survival as well as animals who rank lower on the food chain. And a (formerly) pampered pet would be easy game to a predator. "Fish gotta swim, birds gotta eat," - the helpful pelecan in 'Finding Nemo'. I don't think eye pecking is a mating ritual, it's aberrant behavior probably brought on by overcrowding and possibly by competition among the males. If releasing them into the wild is cruel, why don't you think allowing them to peck the eyes out of the females is cruel? I bet those female ducks would agree with me, if they had a vote on the issue. Cheryl

I'm sure your moths are no longer coupled but for future reference, cecropias will disengage when it gets dark. If for some reason, I need them apart sooner than when the sun goes down, I'll put them in a dark room, set a timer for 15 minutes and then go back in to figure out where the male has flown (since he was on the outside of the cage) so I can let him go. Males can mate multiple times. I put the females in paper bags as soon as I realize they have disengaged. Most tend to start laying eggs soon after disengaging and will continue to lay eggs for a few days. OTOH, I have run into a few that do not like bags. I had one this year that sat for two days before laying eggs. Normally when this happens, I let the girl go and move on to another but this year wild males have been few and far between so I waited her out. Anyway, periodically check on her progress until you have enough eggs and then let her go. If for some reason, you want to lengthen the time you're raising cecropia cats (I do it for teaching purposes), there are two things you can do (that I know about): 1) Experiments show you can keep the eggs in the frig for up to 10 days without affecting the developing cats. Put a few in the frig and you can stagger when the cats are coming out. 2) Raise some on box elder maple (Acer negundo). Some people call it the "poison ivy tree" because young trees resemble poison ivy. Cecropias cats still reach full size but they can take up to 3.5 months to get there. WARNINGS: 1) Heat and high humidity are the enemy when raising cecropias. If they get too much of both, the cats can start dropping like flies, especially if conditions are crowded. If you raise them outside, make sure you have good air circulation. 2) Cecropia cats love to drown themselves so if you are raising them on branches placed in water, do what you can to make it difficult for the cats to reach the water. You mentioned raising them on multiple plants. While the eggs are developing, I suggest taking cuttings from each plant you are considering and making sure each holds up in water for at least 3 or 4 days. Some leaves (including most maples I've tried) wither in nothing flat so they are pretty useless unless you are using rearing bags on the trees. My latest cecropia story: Went to an outside wedding reception yesterday. It was on the west side of town, the area where I release my male moths. So, I took 3 cecropia and 4 polyphemus with me, the plan being my kids would release them somewhere in the area. The kids ended up making a bee line for the pool (this was a very laid back reception) so I took the two containers over to the side of the yard for later. The moths, especially the cecropias, ended up being the hit of the party. I gave many moth talks, lots of people took moth pics and the bride absolutely loved that I brought the moths. Some drunk women apparently did not believe that I planned on releasing the moths and took it upon herself to set them free, greatly disappointing the bride's sister who had not seen them yet. KC

Hi Elisabeth! I'm in the Farmersville/Germantown area, not far from Germantown metropark in Montgomery count. How about you? I think I am confused though, I thought this was snakeroot ... ... and it is commonly known as white snakeroot but is actually Ageratina altissima and not the same as the Virginia snakeroot that is the host plant. That also explains why I was confused about your difficulty finding it since it is quite invasive. I did spend a little time looking for the Virginia snakeroot but the mosquitos were eating me alive so I will continue looking this weekend. But I am positive they were pipevine swallows .. I did discover that something has been eating my pawpaw trees but didn't see any cats on it. And that's assuming I've correctly identified this as a pawpaw tree ...

I have no idea if one can print from a scanned negative on a home printer. The scanner just turns the negative into a digital image, the same as a scanned print, so a store that can print pictures from CDs should (I think) be able to print from the scanned negatives. I have never used this feature as yet, always putting it off, but my setup instructions that came with the scanner tell how to scan these things. I'm not a photo expert at all, so maybe I should give this a try and let you know what happens. I noticed that NOCANDO, the poster who first responded to you, has a similar scanner to mine. Not all scanners have this capability, but there are probably others besides these models that can do this. I just thought I'd like to be able to make prints from my slides, so that is the main reason I bought this model.