Coloradia pandora

J and I stopped in at the Von's in Mammoth this evening to discover dozens of Pandora Pinemoths bashing themselves against the lights in the parking lot. They'd fly around until they'd hit the bulbs, and then come crashing down to the ground, where many littered the pavement. It tugged too much on my sensitivities, so armed with raspberry cartons and cardboard boxes and lidded cookware, we grabbed as many as we could find, and then drove out of town to a nice dark spot to release them.

Pandora Pinemoths (the existence of whom I didn't know until this evening) have a two-year life cycle, overwintering in the mountains first as larvae (on pine trees), and then as pupae (in the ground). Explosions of the adult population in late summer and fall are known to wreak havoc on the Jeffrey and Lodgepole Pines of the Sierra, whose needles are the foodplant of the species.