I have little bitty monarch caterpillars! Ironically, the eggs on the first leaves I picked did not hatch (not fertile?), but after ordering the butterfly habitat, I saw a monarch laying eggs on the milkweed by the deck. I grabbed a couple of leaves from there and those are the ones that hatched.
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| Day 1 (or 2?) |
I didn't write down the caterpillars' "birthday", so I'm a bit fuzzy on exactly when they hatched. (And I suffer from CRAFT - can't remember a freaking thing.) I *think* day one they looked like teeny tiny meal worms, but by day two the stripes were visible.
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| Day 3 (or 4?) |
Now you can see the antennae, which for some reason just makes me go *squeee*!
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| Day 4 (or 5?) |
The first indicator that there were caterpillars was the appearance of frass (caterpillar poop) in the bottom of the mason jar. This has to be kept cleaned up, so now not only do I pick up dog poop and scoop kitty litter, I am mopping up frass.
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| Frass |
Initially, I set up the butterfly habitat in the kitchen, weighting it down with a couple of bricks in what turned out to be a vain hope Beau (the feline destroyer of all things fine) could not knock it over. Unfortunately, the mess sides are perfect for snagging cat claws. So now the habitat is in the bathtub, behind a closed door.
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| Butterfly habitat |
According to the instructions, this habitat can incubate up to 30 butterflies at a time, so of course I went out and found five more leaves with eggs. It is not limited to monarchs, either, so maybe next year I'll be able to raise some swallowtails or something. Science is fun!
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