How to decorate a room with live moths....

There was a teenage boy who was an enthusiastic butterfly and moth collector – he used to find caterpillars and rear them in his bedroom and watch the chrysalides hatch into the adult insects.

On one occasion he had a Vapourer Moth pupa which hatched out into a female moth which he kept in his room. It just so happened that the bedroom had just been  redecorated and the paint was still wet and sticky. In this photo you can see the wingless female Vapourer clinging to the empty pupal cocoon.

The female Vapourer produced such a strong attractant scent (called a Pheromone) that dozens of male Vapourer moths flew in through the open bedroom window that night (it was a hot summer evening and the windows were open to let out the smell of the drying paint) and became stuck all over the wet paint!