Thanks, dg. That was my first thought, but on watching it, I was sure that wasn't what it was. We have a fair number of swallowtails this year and it had much longer wing trailers and had no black at all that I could see. Also the few yellow swallowtails I've seen here are a more creamy yellow. This was very lemony, like a sulfur.

Maybe a comet moth that was run out of it's daytime bed for some reason? They're rare, but gorgeous, and they have the long tails.

Yes! Thanks, I think that's it. I live next to a preserve area and on weekends this time of year there are a lot of folks tromping through there to harvest the land crabs illegally , so it might have been startled awake and chased by someone wanting to catch it.

There was a hurricane once that destroyed a tropical butterfly and bird house somewhere in S. Florida (sorry, can't remember exactly which one) and rare moths and butterflies are often spotted down there, although they aren't plentiful. The Keys are full of the survivors of that disaster.

Yes, we acquired a number of unusual critters after the 2004/2005 hurricanes, which also blew in some plants that weren't around here before. We had a wonderful colony of cosmosoma myrodora for a while, but the county maintenance killed off all the hempvine (they seem only to kill the native plants and leave the invasives) and ended that. :(

That's sad about the moth! They are so pretty! But then, hempvine is a big problem. I'm sure there is somewhere else it grows that they will find to breed one. It's not like it's rare, and from what I hear, you can't really kill it. It just comes back from seed.