It’s been a while since I’ve graced your presence with butterflies. Did you miss them?

It’s been a challenge to save the world butterflies while traveling so much. I became busy. Life got in the way. I became distracted.
What was I talking about?
Oh, yeah! Last week I was checking on the irrigation near one of my Giant Milkweed plants when I noticed my biggest nemesis: an effing wasp who was trying to eat monarch caterpillars. It’s what they do.

At that moment, I could not recall where my electric swatter was, so I did the next best thing: I took off my flip flop and proceeded to chase the bastard away from the caterpillars. He got away and I knew he would be back as soon as I was out of sight.
*raises fists in dispair*
I gathered as many caterpillars as I could save and brought them in for safe keeping. Apparently if I don’t control nature, bad things happen. I’ve not been collecting them since we’ve been gone so much. I can ask my house/dog sitter to do a lot of things for me, but feeding and cleaning up after caterpillars might be over the top.

I easily fell back into my old routine: delivering fresh food to them daily; Uber eats without the extra fees.
BABIES
Do you see those little tiny black spots? Those are eggs that are close to hatching. When the egg is first laid, it’s whitish-yellow and get’s darker as it progresses.

SPEAKING OF POOP
Caterpillars poop A LOT. It’s generally dark green from the milkweed leaves; their poop is little blobs that are small for the tiniest of cats, but get larger as they grow. I was feeding them some purple flowers from my Giant Milkweed and I noticed the cats eating the flowers had purply poop. Science ya’ll.

SKIN YA’LL
Did you know that monarch caterpillars molt five times in their life cycle? They’re so efficient that when they shed their old skin, they EAT it. The molting process takes about 18-20 hours.

When they grow out of their skin, they also grow out of their FACE (cap).
I often find old face caps laying around. You too?


Just like humans, caterpillars have personalities. Sometimes when I pick one up, they’ll crawl all over the place (while leaving a silk trail on my skin in case they fall) and some will just shut down, curl into a ball and wait for me to put them down.

Another Fun Fact: Here in hawt Florida, we have butterflies all.year.round. There is no migrating for My Monarchs, as they love the weather.
The other day I went to add in some fresh food after someone contacted me via my Milkweed Eats app and I noticed this guy was getting ready to create his chrysalis. Please admire this sped-up video because I thought I might need an arm transplant from holding the damn phone for so long.
Ok. Sorry. That was a lot of movement. If you now have debilitating vertigo, please do not contact a lawyer. I swear, I thought I was moving in SLOW MOTION while using Time-Lapse.
Here is the shed skin that I often find after they create their chrysalis.

Now that I think about it, these guys are slobs. They poop everywhere and leave their skin and faces for me to clean up as if I have nothing else to do.
Once the chrysalis has hardened, (at least 24 hours later) I’ll spritz it with some water to loosen up the silk and move the chrysalis to a more convenient-for-me-to-release spot. (I use an old styrofoam cooler; I pin the chrysalis by their silk into the side of the cooler and cover with cheese cloth)

{BTW: Moths create cocoons, butterflies create chrysalis. When I hear someone refer to a butterfly coming out of a cocoon, I want to gently poke them in the eye with a spoon.}
In 9- 10 days, they will eclose; generally in the morning and I’ll release them in the afternoon IF it is dry and sunny. If it’s a stormy day, I’ll keep them contained as they don’t eat for the the first 24 hours anyway.
This is a Queen Butterfly, before and after. They are very similar to monarchs; they eat the same food, create the same chrysalis and have the same lifecycle, but for some reason there isn’t the same amount of hoopla over them.

Did you enjoy my Master Class?
I really should charge money for this, but I’ve always been more of a giver than a taker.
XOXO
