The Moth From My Christmas Tree.

Over the holidays, as Bear and I sat in the living room, my Christmas tree began making a strange buzzing sound ... a sound like wings rapidly beating against Fraser Fir needles.

Bear cocked his head and listened in that cutely puzzled way that dogs do.
I did the same.

And then suddenly, this brown alien flew out of the tree and onto the fake evergreen border atop the cypress mantle.

I believe this is a Sphinx moth of some kind and I am convinced that he was in a cocoon inside my Christmas tree.

The warmth of the room probably caused a rapid metamorphosis and the moth matured in the dead of winter rather than later in the spring.

I took the moth outside on a fairly mild Florida winter day and released him onto the dead oak leaves of a laurel oak which I had cut down a few months before.

Can you see him?

Ignore the video title below. I wrote down the first thing  that came to mind when I saw him and did not correct it before uploading.