Garden Adventure: The Episode in Which We Find a Creepy Bug

It is not uncommon for me to find strange bugs in my garden or in my life, and I do what I usually do when I find something I don’t know, I google image search for it based on descriptions that usually go something like “creepy alien jumping shrimp bug” (aka: camel cricket) until I find a picture that sort of matches whatever I encountered. 

So on Garden Project Weekend 2012, when I came across this super creepy foreign entity and made my cowboy come look at it and eventually pitch it over the fence, I made a mental note to find out what it was.  Yes, I need a man to get rid of gross bugs for me, but he needs me to order the beer, so it evens out.

But later when I was going through pictures and I came across the one we took of Mystery Creepy Bug, I began my image search and discovered that it was the pupa form of a Five Spotted Hawk Moth.   The caterpillar of such is known as the Tomato Horn Worm, so pitching him over the fence was probably a good idea.  The article to which I was able to successfully identify my mystery bug was actually a very interesting introspect into life, relationships, and tomato gardening.  I really enjoyed it and wanted to share, "Hope and Tomato Season: Five Spotted Hawk Moth". 

Additionally, I found it fascinating that this moth spends 270 days in this pupa form in the ground. That is the same gestation period as a human baby. Now I kinda feel bad for pitching it over the fence. Except that its offspring would have feasted on my tomato patch, so actually, no I don’t feel that bad. Sorry Hawk Moth. This isn't personal. It's just that we want to eat the same thing. If only you were an earthworm, or even a butterfly, then we could be friends.

So tell me, how do you find out what something is when you don't know what it is called?  And what did we do before the interwebs? You can't exactly look up "creepy 3 inch pupa" in the index of an encyclopedia, can you?