CLOSED: Green and white caterpillar

Cant figure out what kind of cat this is, I found similar ones but nothing that was an exact match. He was eating one of my sunflowers and I am located in Northern IL.

Your cat. is the same one I found on my Rose Home Run this morning munching into the center of a bud. I've noticed something eating up the leaves on the bushes and buds but I've had a grasshopper problem the past 2 years :( and thought the little buggers were going at the rose bushes. I've NEVER had a problem with caterpillars chomping my flowers but I think for whatever reason this is the year for them. I just found another on my roses tonight. I need to search more threads and see where they come from. I've noticed another caterpillar on my siding (I think I posted it on this forum) asking for an I.D. When I was outside today putting down Nolo bait for the grasshoppers another furry cat. I asked about for an I.D. fell out of the tree next to me onto a hydrangea leaf barely missing my head! I also found another type on a seed geranium that looked like a small bit of a stick! With our weird weather condition this year and all the windy, stormy weather - I wonder if that has something to do with it. Are they coming down from the trees? Here's a picture of the cat. on my rose bud. If you enlarge the picture enough you will see the white lines on it as yours has. (P.S. I did smash about 20 baby grasshoppers today, UGH!) I hope the Nolo bait works on those. I am SICK of dealing with them! It's been quite the discouraging spring!

Oops, I took another look and compared the two and they are different - similar but different all the same. I'm sorry. Maybe post to the butterfly and hummingbird forum and see what they think, he may turn in to a beautiful butterfly for your garden.

This message was edited Jun 7, 2008 9:38 PM

Me again. I did a search of the forums and it looks like they are inchworms and they are not nice. They are moth worms (from below ground) vs. butterfly caterpillars. Google cutworms and inchworms for images. Most stuff says they feed at night. I'm going out now to give it a once over again for them. One of the posts said that wherever they saw leaves with holes in them they'd flip the leaves over and find a worm. I checked the underside of mine after finding the first one and saw nothing but then tonight found another. I think they are elusive.
On another note. I had a big grub problem last year with the racoons destroying my yard. I ordered HB nematodes from Bugological and applied it two days ago. They will control grubs and weevils and cutworms and various other things. I chose to use them because I don't like pesticides/insecticides etc. because I have kids and dogs. These are safe to use. I applied with a hose-end sprayer but then the soil needs to be kept moist. Hopefully with all this rain we've had they will take care of the problems. Good luck ridding your plants of these pesky critters.