OK, I was bad and you can all beat me up verbally later. I got impatient, figuring the cocoon was no longer viable and I opened it. Well, started to open it. I breached the outer cocoon and had just started to expose the pupa when I suddenly got that sense of...weight that you mentioned before. This felt decidedly heavier than the other empty cocoon and pupa. And I stopped right there! So - here I am with a baby on my hands and I don't know what to do with it. I have rigged a cage as you can see in the pic, and the thing is presently in a room by itself with fresh air coming through the window. That's the closest I can approximate to same conditions of temperature and humidity. It will be slightly warmer than it was outside, but not by much. Without the lights on, the room is in about the same lighting conditions as the shady area it was in before. I've changed the orientation of the cocoon somewhat when I attached it to the cage - is that a problem? And what do I do next??? Will it need misting or anything since it would be getting that outside? And once the moth starts to emerge, which hopefully it's still going to - how long a process is it till it's ready to be set free? Is it more likely to do this during the day or the night? I don't want to stress it out by being caged and I don't want to miss taking a pic either. :) - Alex

Liz, I raise all my butterflies and moths on my porch, which is covered, but not screened in - it's open on three sides. We live in the woods, so the porch is shady, and the cats don't get too hot. I raise the lunas in a big mesh cage on the porch - when they get big, I have to transfer some to another cage, and that's when I'm raising just a couple dozen, like I did this time. I put their sweetgum stems in left overs containers, and it takes up a lot of room. When they emerge from their cocoons, I open the cage doors around 9:00 p.m. and leave it up to them. The males all leave sometime during the night, unless they mate with a female on the porch, in or out of a cage. Some females stay in the cages, some fly off into the woods, and some fly to parts of the porch, like the one in the picture. The mint green female in the picture directly above, next to the yellow male, left the cage and perched at about the same place the one in the first picture landed. Last night, about 10:00 or so, the last time I checked on them, the males were still in the cage, and she was on the ceiling. This morning I found her mated with a male, yellowy, but he could have been any of the three or a wild one or one that emerged a few days ago and flew off into the woods, but came back when he 'heard her calling', I don't know. They'll leave after it gets really dark tonight. One of the females that stayed and mated in the second cage laid a lot of eggs (about 60?) on the bar of the cage, plus some in the mesh. I've retrieved the ones from the mesh, about 30, to raise myself. I think I'm going to find a good stand of sweetgum and tie the bar (I broke the cage down to clean it and replaced the 'eggy' bar with another one) to a branch. I want there to be a big canopy of leaves, where they can travel from one tree to another, with ample leaves available. I can't handle more than about 30 cats - they eat an incredible amount of leaves! Every time I raise lunas, at least one female leaves me some presents! So you can see what the big cage looks like, here's a picture I took of it one year when a whole lot of lunas emerged on the same afternoon - Sherry

Simply beautiful! These look like Disco Belles (shortest variety)...do you know what makes them a Luna Series? I started mine from seed from GWeb trade early spring in a cat litter bucket with the best soil possible, then transplated to right area, and believe it or not, I got some too, but very late in NY State, but beautiful none-the-less. Good luck to you...you will love them. Ginny B.

Hardy hibiscus go dormant each year. They probably ran a tad short of water while in the store, so are going dormant early. They'll most likely be fine.