Long Awaited Luna Moth

For those that don't know the story behind this post...Caroline and I rescued an injured female luna moth a few months ago.  She was wet due to the rain we had had and one of her wings was broken.  Caroline ID'd the moth as a female and when we returned from errands she had moved to the door frame and laid a couple of eggs.  In researching the moths, we found out that the giant silk moths when mature only live about 5-10 days, and in that time they mate, lay eggs, and die.   They don't even eat.  So, we looked up the "approved" method of harvesting the eggs and put her in the paper bag, folded the top over and went on our vacation to FL.  Upon our return we found that the eggs had hatched and many of the tiny caterpillars had already escaped to their doom (the bag was on top of the frig and the escapees had crawled into the freezer-they were that tiny).  Anyway, about twenty were still hanging about in the bag; we put them in an old fish tank and began the chore of collecting black walnut leaves (their preferred food) every day.  Our only source for these leaves was my father-in-laws tree and let me tell you, these little buggers can eat!  For the month it took them to get to cocoon stage, my in laws tree's lower branches are bare; it got to the point we had to use pole loppers to get the leaves.  Only 7 caterpillars cocooned and 5 have hatched at this point.  The following pictures chronicle our experience.