In Which I Share My Butterfly-ing Method With You. AKA: Welcome To Monarchs 101

On July 25, 2022July 24, 2022 By SuzIn As blogged by Suz, In the land of butterflies30 Comments

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

*Do you see the second monarch? twinning!*

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.

**Fun fact:** When the baby hatches, its first meal is its shell. Which is the equivalent of a human baby eating its amnionic sac. Which is probably better than your toddler eating processed chicken nuggets.

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.

I knew that telling you this would enhance your life greatly.

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.

*This guy and his old skin. He’s contemplating on which end to start eating first. Choices elude me too buddy. .* .

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)

*Monarch chrysalis on left, Queen chrysalis on the right*

{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

Being Clever And Not Wasteful While Possibly Starting A New Trend

On September 20, 2021September 19, 2021 By SuzIn As blogged by Suz28 Comments

The theme for Lolo and Nathan’s co-ed shower was Bubbles and Brews. I purchased a variety of sparkling wine/champagne and of course brewski’s. I went the easy route and made a huge salad and ordered some sliders/wraps from Publix. Linds made a charcuterie board, (a Coochie board) Kelly brought a lovely cold quinoa salad and my friend Dawn made amazing cupcakes for dessert.

I remembered I only had about 6 champagne glasses because I’m a wino and not a bubbles girl. I didn’t want to purchase champagne glasses just for ONE party and using plastic for wine or champagne is against my religion.

I had this brilliant idea to go to Goodwill and purchase a plethora of champagne glasses to use for the party.

Goodwill DID NOT DISAPPOINT.

*side note* I almost got into a fight with an obnoxious woman in line behind me as she was the most impatient and rude person I’ve encountered in a long time. She reminded me of the Crack Whore I had a verbal fight with in the bank parking lot. GOOD TIMES! Why must some people act like asses?

Anyhoo, I purchased 12 mismatched champagne (99 cents each) glasses because why must everything match? You don’t have to use wine charms or markers to remember who’s glass is who’s if they are unique. Well, unless your friends get all bubble-wasted and forget, which didn’t happen this time.

One of the glasses pictured belonged to my Mom and one of them was gifted to us at our wedding over 30 years ago from Kelly.

And the best part? After the party I washed them, wrapped them up in the paper they came in and returned them to Goodwill.

Rental Genius Who?

Rental Genius Suz.

Maybe I didn’t invent or discover something new-to-you, but it was new and fun for me!

Xoxo

A Bird In The Hand

On September 7, 2021September 6, 2021 By SuzIn As blogged by Suz26 Comments

My day-to-day life is already filled with butterflies and last week I shared with you that I learned in depth about Bees on the first part of our visit to California.

What’s could be next?

Birds?

Abso-freaking-lutely.

Kelly signed us up for a Falconry experience. At first, I thought she only signed up the guys for it and I thought that was appropriate. Men and Birds Of Prey go together like ~~wine & cheese~~ peas & carrots.

I was so glad that she included us in this as well as it might have been my favorite part of our entire 9 days in California. I’ve done some really cool things in my life, but this was right up there with helicoptering over the Blue Hole in Belize, but with birds who flew and I stayed on the ground.

Maybe, it was nothing like that, but the WOW factor was 100% there.

CUE THE BIRDS

The Master Falconry Guy was so interesting. He was very serious about his birds and educating us on his birds and how WE as humans have made their lives worse, but he was also very funny. He had to poke at us, the only non California people in the group. Again with the Florida jokes?

In case you were wondering, I did have a bajillion questions for him.

I did not know that there was a time where birds of prey had a bounty on their heads and were hunted by humans. Their numbers declined SO much and it took years and years for them to come back up when humans realized they are an integral part of our ecosystem. Of course, then DDT was introduced and they were being poisoned. WTH people?

I’m trying to remember all the birds he shared with us, we were able to get an up close and personal meeting with each of them. A great horned owl, The Peregrin falcon, (it can fly up to 300mph) a red tailed hawk, a Saw Whet owl, (which was adorable) American Kestrel (also adorable) and a Harris’s Hawk. I feel like I’m forgetting a few. I didn’t photograph each one as I was really trying to be present and take it all in.

The great horned owl was amazing; he was able to channel his inner Exorcist by spinning his head around. While the Coach had his hand up to him, he quickly took his sharp ass beak and started to close down on his fingers. Coach was cool as a cucumber, stayed still and the bird changed his mind and did not crush his fingers.

Later on, the Falconry expert shared a story about when This Very Owl was spooked and clenched his beak on the hand of one of his friends almost crushing bones until he felt comfortable again. Ummm….could you have told us this 10 minutes ago? I’d like my husband to have both of his hands working. How else can he cook, do dishes and massage my back?

At the end of his presentation which was almost 2 hours we were able to release and recall this lovely Harris’s Hawk. OMG. I wanted to do this all day long. He would take off and it looked like he was never coming back. You can see there were some buzzards in the area too, but he paid them no attention. I think he knew he was Regal compared to them, although we all know buzzards have a special place in our ecosystem too.

{In case there was a buzzard reading this, I didn’t want them to feel bad}

Our falconry expert released Ariel (the Hawk) and then we took turns going up and letting him land on us, then release for the next person to be there when he came back.

I was able to capture the Coach on Ariel’s return

Suz releasing Ariel after gracefully accepting his return from the Coach’s release.

You guys, this hawk stared so deeply into my eyes when he was on my arm that for a second, I thought he was trying to steal my soul and fly off with it. Who would I be if I were soul-less?

This was such an educational, exciting and beautiful experience that I encourage anyone who has this opportunity to seize it! Just don’t go losing your soul to any of the creatures.

You know I walked away from this thinking I could add an owl or small falcon to my menagerie; I mean, I don’t think birds of prey would harm my baby dolphin. Right?

Has anyone had an experience like this?

XOXO