Issue with instantiating parts of a characters body - 2D

I'm trying to create a situation where my character destroys an enemy and gains back a piece of his tail in the process. The tail is just a series of circle shaped sprites and they should instantiate in a straight line behind the character piece by piece. A good example is the old nokia game Snake. The pieces should continue to instantiate as long as the character destroys enemies. It should look like so:

I've set it up so that there is an empty game object attached to the character with a script on it that instantiates a tail piece prefab. The prefab contains the tail piece sprite with another empty game object attached to it with the same script, so that the tail continues to grow.

This is the method in the script that instantiates a tail piece. I've tested it outside of my game in a test scene and it works but instantiates infinitely:

 public void instantiateTail()
 {        
     clone = (GameObject)Instantiate (obj,      
     transform.GetChild(0).transform.position,   
     Quaternion.identity);
 
     clone.transform.parent = transform.GetChild(0).transform;
 
 }

Then I have an "enemyScript" that handles what happens when an enemy is destroyed:

 void OnTriggerEnter2D(Collider2D other)
     {
     if (other.tag == "Player") {
             hud = GameObject.Find ("Main                      
             Camera").GetComponent<HUDScript> ();                              
             hud.IncreaseScore (10);
             //add tail piece to character somehow//
         Destroy (this.gameObject);//destroys enemy
     } else {
     Destroy (this.gameObject, 5f);
     }
 
     }

So the player collides with the enemy, the enemy is destroyed and the player's score goes up. And then some code that handles the instantiation of the tail piece prefab. My issue is that I can't wrap my head around what this code should be. I tried setting up a boolean "dead" that would become true when the enemy was destroyed and trigger the instantiation script but no dice. I'm now thinking the pieces should instantiate within an array...? And I'm also having trouble figuring out how to make it so that one piece instantiates each time an enemy is destroyed. Any help would be much appreciated.