I USED TO FIND Polyphemus moths in my backyard. This was in the 1970s, in Toronto. They had spots on their brown, black, and yellow wings that looked like eyes.
They’d first been described two centuries earlier, in the storied year 1776. And named for the cyclops of Greek mythology.
Also called giant silk moths, they can grow to six inches across, though the ones I found on our quiet street were not so enormous. Their bright green caterpillars can gobble up to eighty-six thousand times their weight inside two months. As with most large moths, adults aren’t built to eat: they have no