Caterpillar Season

Every year or two, we get to experience the bizarre life cycle of butterflies. Swallowtails like to lay their eggs on parsley, so if my herb garden is in good form, I'll one day go out to get a garnish for pasta and find these cute striped creatures have munched it down to its' stems. We also try to keep some native milkweed growing in the garden to allow monarchs to hatch as well. Earlier this year, the monarchs demolished our milkweed and wandered off to pupate before I had time to buy a butterfly enclosure.

Big swallowtail eating parsley

See the 2 chrysalises?

Monarch friend on milkweed

So, when the swallowtails showed up, I did the obvious thing and ordered a butterfly house from Amazon, and went and bought a few more pots of parsley. So far, I think it has cost me about $70 to keep up with their parsley eating habit. Very hungry caterpillars indeed! Now we are monitoring daily for the caterpillars to cling to a stick or the wall and create the typical J-shape that indicates they are about to form their chrysalis. As of this morning, we are up to 4 chrysalises (or is it chrysali?) and 2 more caterpillars are getting ready.

Sometimes the chrysalis is brown

We sent 3 caterpillars and a parsley plant to 4th grade science class to help them visualize biology in action. I can't wait to hear the reports on how those little guys are progressing.

Sometimes light green

Now comes the waiting game. It usually takes 10-14 days for the butterflies to emerge. I will continue to photograph these fascinating creatures and I'm sure a few of them will be given creative names. We actually have a paper wasp living on our back patio that the boys have named "Pancake". No idea where that came from or why they are so fascinated - usually they want the wasps chased off so nobody gets stung. But, back to my swallowtails - I am anxiously counting down the days until I start seeing a chrysalis darken, and then become almost transparent before it hatches!