“It does, yeah, it’s got some pretty groovy patterns, I mean, mostly browns and grays, but it’s got a couple of big eye spots and a bunch of wavy lines," Rogers said.
He said it stuck around for pictures.
“It actually didn’t really move or react much at all even thought I did a little mini photo shoot there because I knew, I mean, this was something I wanted to show my friends to try to figure out what the heck it was," he said.
The wing span of the black witch moth is up to 7 inches.
Rogers spotted it close to 71st and the Lake.
“As I was going to open the door I noticed that there was an enormous moth perched right on the door, really a little bigger than my hand. Not something that I had ever seen here in Chicago before," Rogers said.
He put pictures on Instagram and Twitter and soon learned what it was; and that it may not live long here.
“Some of the scientists that I’ve seen interviewed in a few places have said about it, were so far out of its range it may not know what to eat up here.”
But it may not be the only one.
“There was also someone else who tweeted at me that she saw one recently down around 100th Street and Torrence Avenue," Rogers said.
Experts at Field Museum and the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum were excited. “Amazing,” one told the Tribune, who said she would have lost it if she saw one.
There’s all kinds of folklore associated with the black witch, most of it not good.
Often it’s seen as a sign of death or misfortune.