“I told my family, and they now refer to me as Khaleesi.”
Jamie Zimolong was watering the plants on her front porch in Maryland when she noticed a brownish-gray bug.
She wasn’t sure what he was at first, but then she realized she was gazing at a little dragon.
“Maryland has cicadas, so I’m used to bugs everywhere,” Zimolong explained to The Dodo. “Because their wings are all over the place, I assumed that was what it was. Then I took a closer look and said, ‘Wow! ‘It looks just like a dragon!'”
The “dragon” was actually a sort of moth called a spotted apatelodes moth, or Apatelodes torrefacta. This moth may be found in fields and forests from Maine to Florida and Texas, and he regrettably does not breathe fire.
With only a 1.5-inch wingspan, Zimolong probably wouldn’t have noticed the small guest if he hadn’t been at her doorway. His upwardly curving abdomen and V-shaped wings, on the other hand, gave him a dragon-like appearance — even though she was staring at his back, not his front.
Zimolong took a snapshot of the unusual moth to show her boyfriend and family, earning the “Game of Thrones” aficionado a new moniker: “I informed my family, and now they call me Khaleesi,” Zimolong said.
The beetle has already departed Zimolong’s porch, but she was grateful to have such an unusual species pay her a visit — and is now on the watch for any additional little dragons or mythological entities that could fly into her garden.