Few sights in a garden are more conflicting than a healthy herb patch being stripped bare by culprits that are almost too beautiful to blame.
A Reddit post captured that exact kind of moment, with vividly striped caterpillars feeding on parsley in a backyard garden.
What happened?
The original poster uploaded a pair of photos of the insects alongside the caption,
"Pack of vibrant caterpillars eating our parsley."
The photos show countless well-camouflaged green caterpillars weighing down the leaves of a parsley plant. The longer you stare at the photo, it seems more caterpillars appear.
"Those are the caterpillars of the black swallowtail butterfly, Papilio polyxenes," one commenter said.
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"Sorry for your parsley but those guys are gorgeous & will make lovely butterflies," another commented.
"I actually grow dill just to have food for them," one user explained. "Just try to protect them."
The original poster shared a video of one of the more well-fed caterpillars munching on the leaves.
(If the video does not appear, click here)
"They are Very Hungry Caterpillars," one commenter joked.
Why does it matter?
For home gardeners, situations like this often come down to a tradeoff between protecting every edible plant and leaving some space for wildlife.
Allowing a small number of caterpillars to feed can help make a yard more supportive of pollinators and overall backyard biodiversity.
It is one of the balancing acts that comes with growing your own food. Gardening can save money on produce, provide fresher and often better-tasting herbs and vegetables, and improve both mental and physical health through time outdoors and light activity.
If gardeners want to keep harvesting while still supporting pollinators, planting extra host herbs can make a major difference.
Instead of reaching for chemical sprays, many gardeners choose to tolerate some leaf damage, manage pests selectively by hand, or designate a "sacrificial" plant for insects.
So while the vanishing parsley may be annoying, it also shows that the garden is providing habitat for eventual butterflies.
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