Nasty Buggers

We're growing tomatoes in a pot on the back porch. The other day, the wife asks me to "take a look" at something, on the plant. There I saw three of the nastiest worms I've come across, each about the size of my ring finger, with little white critters massed on their backs, looking just like this picture:



After I terminated the worms and their little white friends, we looked them up. Tomato Hornworms - they do a fair amount of damage to the plants, eventually grow up to be moths. The white things? The cocoons of parasitic wasp larvae, which feed on the worms. Apparently, I should have let these worms and their passengers live, as the emerging wasps would endeavor to control the worm population going forward.

As disgusting as the worms were, I'm not ready to begin wasp farming just yet.