The childhood encounter is still in my mind, as vivid as if it were yesterday. I was about six years old, an intrepid explorer of the groves of rosebay willowherb that towered above me on the local waste ground. Fossicking among the leaves one day, Ifound a creature as fat as my finger, sepia brown with huge eye-spots and skin the texture of vellum. I later discovered that it was the snake-mimicking larva of the elephant hawk-moth, and that initial feeling of amazement has never left me. Whenever Isee one now, I relive that sense of wonder.
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