"...but he was still hungry."

One little tree in our backyard is being consumed, one leaf at a time, by fat, green caterpillars.  We have watched over the last month, simultaneously fascinated and repulsed.  You thought that Eric Carle was exaggerating in the The Very Hungry Caterpillar? At one point, we could actually hear the leaves being eaten! I am not joking- there have been at least 2 dozen, maybe more, of these little creatures in our tree!

(Just today I read that a caterpillar has 228 distinct and separate muscles in its head.  Isn't that amazing?!)

But back to our tree...
By now, cocoons outnumber the seemingly innocuous larva.  What next?  We are hoping for brightly emblazened butterflies, but realize that the lesser cousin, the comparatively dull moth, is probably much more likely.  Some of you much-more-clever-than-I homeschool moms- put your curious kids on this assignment, ok?, and tell us what we're looking at here. 

Besides a very sad little tree, of course...