That's a tomato horn worm, s/he will eat right through your crop. You'll soon have a garden of sticks, all leaves will be gone. I think it turns into that moth eventually but it will eat through your tomato and pepper plants on its way to becoming a pretty moth. Pick and smash. Chickens and fish love to snack on them.

You will be amazed at how much they can eat!! They will strip your tomato and tomatillo plants bare in no time. Spinx moths are very cool, but when I find one of these, I feed it to my chickens. They play chicken rugby with it until someone can manage to swallow it down!

Interesting.

My pepper plants are right next to the tomatillos and I noticed some bites out of the pepper leaves awhile ago but couldn't find what was doing it.
Even though I found him on the tomatillos, the leaves show no evidence of being eaten. The only thing that got me looking were those weird little poops.

I cut the branch off that he was on, set him aside on patio table and left for a few hours. Came back and he was gone. He's either in the belly of a bird, one of my dogs or some how made his escape back to the buffet.

I'm pretty sure when I found him on the plant, I could actually hear him nibbling on branch.
Crazy stuff. For a city slicker, anyway.

Hah! Great pic. Definitely a tomato hornworm caterpillar. I tolerate them on my daturas and solanums, but not on my peppers/tomatoes. Happily, the caterpillars tend to be most active in the hot summer weather when I'm not really growing many peppers/tomatoes and then they taper off as it cools off and I'm growing more tomatoes and peppers.

I keep the Bt handy (Bacillus thurengiensis, the bacteria that is parastic on caterpillars) to put on the tomatoes, but again, only if I don't have some datura foliage to move the cats onto.

Birds and lizards DO love eating those cats when they find them. I try to not watch! I do love the antics of the hummingbird moths, so I try to find a balance.

Great pic, thanks for posting it! Be vigilant, as those caterpillars really do blend in. Looking for poops on the leaves BELOW them is usually the best way for me to locate the little devils!

Take care and happy gardening!
Grant

Thanks for posting this. I found one up here in Cottonwood on my tomatoe plant last week.

I tossed it over the wall into our neighboring empty lot. Looks like I did the right thing.

:)

I just found one today too. I was watering this morning and saw a scattering of frass next to my little red pepper plant, and a small area bare of leaves. It took a while, but I finally found it resting on the underside of a stem. My daughter got a big kick out of the thing and practically considers it to be a pet (She's 20, by the way. :) ) I took a few quick shots and sent in a request to bugguide.net to get a positive ID. It is a Manduca sexta, a.k.a. Carolina sphynx moth.

There's some sort of wild nightshade (sure would like a positive ID) that I allow to grow in my yard because the birds like the berries. I just pulled a big one out a few days ago and tossed it into the compost. I guess this guy must have been on it and found his way to the only other nightshade I have in my yard. The weed nightshade was the preferred plant so in future I'll leave them to host the cats, hoping they'll leave my veggies unmolested. Meanwhile, get plants with tiny flowers to attract the tiny parasitoid wasps which will help control populations.

On another topic, Grant, what varieties of tomatoes and peppers are you growing this fall? When do you plant them?

Here is a link that might be useful: My Bugguide.net entry

I've now pulled a total of 4 of these guys out of my tomatillo and pepper plants. I've enlisted my 5 year old daughter to help. It's like a game of "Where's Waldo".

Look for them at night with a black light or an LED (not conventional) flashlight. Those white stripes will glow and you can pluck 'em off.

I use cooking tongs to remove them because I can't bring myself to touch them. The bigger they are, the stronger their grip!

I picked one off my Anaheim chile plant this morning. Ok, actually I cut off the branch it was on, because like Juttah, I couldn't bring myself to touch it, lol!

He *is* kinda cute but I can't touch them either. One time we picked one off and placed him in a glass jar and dropped lettuce leaves - or something green and leafy - in for him to eat. Every time something dropped in he screamed. Honestly. He screamed. Jeepers. He did not stay a 'pet' for long. I don't think I knew what he was back then.

haha...funny stuff. Like Juttah, I also use my bbq tongs (which didn't end well the first time for the caterpillar due to his death grip on the stem) and like plsqtd, I now use a pair of garden shears to cut the branch because there's no way I'm touching that thing. Not with the noises I hear coming from it.

"Not with the noises I hear coming from it."

You too huh? Weird.