Caterpillars--yuck!

Up until today I have found only one caterpillar in the garden. It was on the hillside garden. Not too big.

Then, today, I was again working on the hillside with one of the tomato plants and I started to notice huge droppings on the leaves and on one of the tomatoes. I started looking around, but to no avail. Just as I was about to give up, I looked up, and there he was on the very top of the vine, six feet up. The largest caterpillar I have ever found in my five years of gardening. He was the size of my middle finger and did not want to let go of the vine. Yuck! I hate pulling caterpillars off the vine and then having to kill them, but what is a gardener to do. They eat the leaves and flowers of your tomato plants. It's either them or me.