On December 16, 2005, park staff observed a Black Witch Moth (Ascalapha odorata) at Fort Macon State Park.  This is the first recorded sighting for North Carolina and only the eleventh known sighting recorded east of the Mississippi excluding Florida.  The Black Witch Moth is usually associated with the New World tropics and flies year round in Rio Grande Valley (southern most part of Texas) and south Florida.  The moth is a member of the family, Noctuidae andis the largest moth in North America.  It has a wingspan of 5 to 7 inches, and is often mistaken for a bat which it somewhat resembles at night.  Known in Mexico by the Indians since Aztec times as mariposa de la muerte (butterfly of death).  When there is sickness in a house and this moths enters, the sick person dies. A variation of this theme heard in the Rio Grand Valley is that death only occurs if the moth flies in and visits all four corners of one’s house.   In Hawaii, Black Witch mythology, though associated with death, has a happier note in that if a loved one has just died, the moth is an embodiment of the person’s soul returning to say goodbye.  In some parts of Mexico, people joke that if one flies over someone’s head, the person will lose his hair.  Still another myth: seeing one means that someone has put a curse on you!  Information for this article came from website, The Black Witch Moth: Its Natural & Cultural History.  This website can be found at the following address: http://www.texasento.net/witch.htm