When I was a little girl it was a huge treat to find a Monarch (or any other kind) caterpillar. Even though I lived in a very rural area growing up I never really knew what their eggs looked like or how to find them. Back then we didn't have Google Image search! The past few years I have been looking for the caterpillars, but despite the abundance of milkweed in my town I have only found one or two in the 8 years I've lived here.
That has all changed.
When I am determined to do something I am the kind of person that will do everything in my earthly power to make it happen. I decided to become determined to find eggs and larvae, and lots of them. My 8 year old daughter has been deathly afraid of insects for as long as I can remember, even butterflies. This does not make sense to me because I spent my childhood in search of the weirdest looking bugs I could find. A Helgramite takes that cake, by the way. I turned over rocks, peeled bark, played in fields of tall grass for hours, and could often be found in a swampy ditch with tadpoles in hand.
In order to help my daughter conquer this fear I figured that if she could go out and help me find eggs and then watch the whole amazing process of metamorphosis in her own home that perhaps she would find a new appreciation for the incredible world outside.
We had already hatched one butterfly from a caterpillar I had found in my garden. I tried to stay up to see it come out of the chrysalis but it happened very early in the morning last weekend. I got some photos of the chrysalis and then of the adult before I let him go.
Unfortunately the kids didn't get to see him before he flew away so I felt that we should try again. In one day we found 10 eggs.
The first 5 we found in the cemetery near my house. Then we went on to my parents' house in Westford and found 5 more plus an almost full grown caterpillar (4th instar) and a probably 2 day old caterpillar on the same plant! I put the ends of the leaves in a shallow tupperware with enough water in it to keep the stems wet. I put the caterpillars each in their own small tupperwares. Then I put everything in the Butterfly Pavilion that my friend gave me.
Today I took an early morning walk with my daughter and just because we were walking past some milkweeds we decided to look for the heck of it. We brought home 3 more eggs.
Then I went across the street into the field next to the construction site and the Dollar General to get some fresh leaves to feed all these prospective creatures. I read somewhere that they like the freshest youngest leaves possible. In the center of the path that is mowed through that field were a bunch of young plants that were popping up. I picked them as close to the ground as possible so that I could keep them in glasses of water and have fresh leaves. Upon closer inspection I noticed that there were eggs on several of the leaves!
So now we are up to I think 16 eggs, 1 mature caterpillar and 1 baby caterpillar. One of the eggs is just about ready to hatch also! I'm going to be a busy leaf gatherer soon if all of them hatch!
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