It's been so much fun watching the Monarch caterpillars so far. Although, it's been rather cold and windy outside these past few days. It was down to 44F the other night and Bobby said it was around 38F when he woke up a couple of mornings ago. Yikes! I hope these caterpillars survive!
There's been a couple school of thoughts so far that I've read on the internet. One is to obviously help the caterpillars and bring them inside the house - feed them and make sure they become butterflies. Then there's the other side that says to let Mother Nature take care of them - if weak butterflies are sent out, the gene pool will be affected. Both good points! So I'm not sure what I'm going to do... but so far we have bought up to 5 additional 1-gallon milkweed plants. Ha!
Some of the caterpillars are getting quite big. It's so much fun watching them move around after they have warmed up in the sun. It's like watching Caterpillar Acrobats :-)
See what I mean?!
Here's a video of one caterpillar busy chomping away at a leaf. They chomp so fast! No wonder that popular children's book called it the Hungry Caterpillar!
I think the big caterpillar that Bobby brought home from the nursery with the milkweed is gone. I wish there was a way to label them - like put a colored dot on them or something. Although, they molt 5 times so that might not work. I can't seem to find any chrysalis nearby yet. I'm almost tempted to hang a netting around the milkweed. It would be so much fun watching the butterflies crawl out of the chrysalis! But aren't we suppose to leave it up to Mother Nature???!
We're suppose to get some heavy rain and strong winds again tomorrow. Actually, the wind has started to pick up now. I hope these caterpillars make it through this round of extreme weather again! Yesterday I counted 15 caterpillars and this morning, I could only see 10 of them. I'll have to go searching for those chrysalises. Hope they didn't decide to do it over the wall at the neighbors - that's a rather long hike for a caterpillar!
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