I stopped at Home Depot the other day to get flowers for the front yard and noticed they had milkweed. While I was contemplating buying it, I noticed a big fat caterpillar on one of the plants. That settled it. We bought the milkweed. We examined the plant and found one more teeny caterpillar which worked out perfectly. There would be just enough milkweed to supply those two with food. The big caterpillar pupated right away but after a few days, we discovered a second little caterpillar. They're very hard to see when they're little but after how thoroughly we had inspected this plant we were still surprised to find him. They eat a lot. So, by the time these two guys were big there were no leaves left.
I had to go out and buy another milkweed plant to feed some very hungry caterpillars before they started wandering around the house looking for food. The leaf that the chrysalis was attached to withered so I took the leaf off and hung him on a curtain with a pin. Last night his chrysalis became clear, meaning he would be coming this morning. Not wanting to wake up to a butterfly flying around my bedroom I found a jar, attached some screen to the top and pinned him to it.
This morning we woke up to this...
And we were just in time to catch this....
It's been fun having caterpillars and butterflies around again and watching all their interesting habits. It had been awhile.
No comments:
Post a Comment