These huge 3-inch to 5-inch moths are not endangered but you have to find them after midnight in or near the woods, before the birds eat their bodies in the early hours of the morning. If you can preserve them for another nighttime, you may rescue these mouthless, non-eating creatures for their prime task, which is mating. The males live to breed and will mate and mate again, but the female, once she has mated, will go on to lay eggs anywhere she can until she is eaten or simply dies at the end of summer. When you rescue a single male you can almost hear the noise made by the rasping bristling antennae as it searches for the scent of the female, which is the one that gives off pheromones of desire for the male, then waits for a mate to come calling on her.

Steffie rescued these two from her house’s outer walls. And I photographed them inside the bucket where they were safe, we thought, until one got scared or attracted by the scent of a female and flew off (despite it being the middle of the morning when they are almost always inert.) The other survived over the day and was revived the next night in order to go out and to find a mate.