CLOSED: Huge Cat!

Is this guy for a Hawk Moth? And...any ideas on how big this thing will get??

Looks a Tomato Hornworm to me.
Do a Google image to see what the adult looks like.

It's on a Sacred Datura

Holy crap! That can't be good :-(

Isn't that something else? I know that the Hawk Moth is the pollinator for the Datura, but geez...how big is this thing going to get before I have no plant left? I just want to know if that is what this thing is. I've googled it, and I think it is

If you want to save it and let it develop you could put in a container and give leaves from the Datura, some of those you can spare. The way it won't eat your leader shoots. They also love tomato leaves, it is usually called the tomato horn worm, bur they like datura also, because the plants are of the same family.

I've seen a couple of them strip an entire tomato plant. They can eat a LOT. Here's some pics. http://www.ext.colostate.edu/Pubs/insect/05517.html

Well, thank you for bringing back to me the nightmares of my childhood!!!

Yours seem to be the tobacco hornworm full-grown larva, whereas the nightmare of my childhood was finding the tomatoo hornworm full-grown larva on a tomato plant while picking tomatoes!

I met a man who is a successful accountant now because of hornworms (yes, really!). Hiis summer job as a kid was to pick off hornworms in the tobacco fields and he hated them with a passion. He swore that he would NEVER see another tobacco worm again and put himself to work getting an education so he could get out of the tobacco fields and away from those nasty things!

We call them "green twinkies" here in honor of how the chickens feel about them. They can do an enormous amount of damage. But the Sphinx moth is a lovely thing. Bt var kurd. works on them, and so do the parasitic wasps. Don't kill it if you see white eggs on its back!

lol..I use to play with tomato horn worms...One of the more "pudgier" of garden worms...lol

lol @ the "green twinkies"...

Ewwwwww you touched those things??????

And yeah, LOL @ the "green twinkies". Don't think I'd want to eat another twinkie at this point LOL

i draw the line at stepping on them. i throw them (with tongs) out into the field across the street. yuck