What To Do?

I don't like getting dirty. I don't like icky things. I don't like slimy textures.

That has made the past couple of weeks a bit difficult, as the front porch has been occupied by some uncooperative residents who are pushing my limits of gross-tolerance.

It wasn't meant to be this way. These little residents were supposed to grow, transform, and amaze. They were supposed to inspire us with their beauty and add vitality to our lives.

Instead we got this:

A tropical milkweed that was stripped of its leaves by the 6 resident caterpillars within a week of bringing it home. We went traipsing into the Old Grove to see if the common milkweed we'd seen last year was still there, pulled some leaves and brought them home to our hungry caterpillars.

The first caterpillar had by now pupated and was hanging from a leaf in a pale green chrysalid, but as the supply of leaves was so scant for a day or so, another caterpillar ate away the entire leaf, leaving the chrysalid hanging precariously from the leaf rib.

A phone call was placed to a friend who lives in a lovely rural setting, asking for help; she found three plants growing at the back of their property, dug them up, brought them to us. We planted them in the garden, hoping to be able to maintain a supply of leaves for the remaining critters.

As the first chrysalid hardened, we noticed that it wasn't right. Its shape was slightly warped; it had a dent in the side. Concern for that monarch's survival began. Today, after its hanging for over 3 weeks, our hopes for it maturing to an adult monarch are gone. What is left of him is a discolouring, very sad looking chrysalid, a mockery of the jewels we had last year.

The second caterpillar to pupate found a safe spot on a twig, but recently fell to the floor of the mesh monarch cage.

A third enterprising caterpillar climbed to the top of the cage, hung there, formed a "j" and pupated, suspended from the mesh. This one still looks a bit promising, but hope is pretty thin right now.

His little friend followed his example and suspended himself from the ceiling of the cage. However, he wasn't strong enough to maintain his life through the days needed to pupate and died there.

So I'm stuck. I don't like these little dead bodies in my front porch, so I want to toss the whole works. But there's the possibility that one of them might still make it, so I want to keep it going. If I try to clear out the debris it's likely that I'll knock that last chrysalid from its anchor.

Truly, the whole thing is quite disturbing to look at, and while I can't bring myself to dispose of it all for the sake of that one little fellow, I'm repulsed by it every time I go into the front porch and think of visitors coming to the door and being greeted by this sight.

What to do?

Beginning the Cycle

We picked up our milkweed caterpillars on Saturday and brought the little fellows home to their mesh enclosure. I was a little disappointed that this year we were not given a chrysalid, too, but I'm comforting myself with the knowledge that soon we'll see our own caterpillars transform.

Seven caterpillars of various size were in the container we were given. One of them was minuscule! Another was barely bigger than minuscule. The rest ranged in size to nearly fully grown.

Now, four days later, we can only find six in the cage. It seems that one is either very good at hiding or he has already met his demise. I'm going to assume the latter, Mr. Minuscule, and I can't seem to find one that looks small enough to be that him.Already one of the caterpillars is looking ready to pupate. He's huge! But memory is a flawed thing, and it's quite possible that he has one more instar to go through before we have a chrysalid. Time will tell!

And now, some of what we saw at the butterfly conservatory:

The hatching room (I'm sure that there is a more official name for it) was popular as people stood at the window, watching the butterflies emerge from their chrysalids. After hanging for a few minutes, a new butterfly would begin to gently move its wings, and then, with no ado at all, lift off from its perch. More than once we saw a new butterfly take wing and then land seconds later . . . on one of the people watching!

Brown-Eyed Boy wanted desperately for one of the butterflies to land on him, but it didn't happen.

At least not to him:

My Girl's bright bandanna was an attraction for this one!

The butterflies were very active, although there didn't seem to be a lot of them this year.

What we did manage to get a good look at, however, were the birds.

Butterflies Coming!

Excitement is in the air: tomorrow we head to Wings of Paradise to pick up our milkweed caterpillars, chrysalis, and tagging materials!

Let the fun begin!

Last year my family participated in this Monarch Rearing program and it was a fantastic Nature Study experience for us. We're doing it again this fall, and heard from Wings of Paradise that they still are able to accept orders for the kit.

(If you want to see some of our fun with the caterpillars and butterflies, click on the link to PeaceLedge in the sidebar, and then in PeaceLedge's topics list, choose butterflies.)

I couldn't upload the pictures from the email they sent me, but if you go to the Wings of Paradise website, you can find lots of info about the Monarch Rearing Program.

Monarch Butterfly Rearing Kits are still available!

Order yours today!

• Last order date is September 11, 2009
• Monarch Butterfly Rearing Kits are available while supplies last.
• A limited number of kits are available

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Once again we are taking orders for Monarch Butterfly Rearing Kits - everything you need to Raise, Tag & Release your very own Monarch Butterflies!

Be amazed as your caterpillars miraculously develop into beautiful Monarch butterflies! Plus, this kit provides everything you need to RAISE, TAG & RELEASE your butterflies and track their migration to Mexico as part of the MonarchWatch international research project.

• AVAILABLE BY PRE-ORDER ONLY
• PRE-ORDERED MONARCH KITS MUST BE PICKED UP AT WINGS OF PARADISE ON SEPTEMBER 12th, 2009 between 10am and 4pm
• RECEIVE FREE ADMISSION FOR YOU & up to 3 GUESTS WHEN YOU PICK-UP YOUR KIT ON SEPTEMBER 12th, 2009 between 10am and 4pm

EACH KIT INCLUDES everything you need to RAISE, TAG & RELEASE five Monarch Butterflies: 5+ Monarch Caterpillars 1 Potted Milkweed Plant 1 Deluxe Collapsible Cage Caterpillar-Care Manual Lifecycle Poster 1 Pack of Milkweed Seeds 5 MonarchWatch Tags Monarch Watch Datasheet & Info

One Thousand Gifts

These thanks for gifts from the fall:

185. Release of a monarch.

::


186. Wholeness.
::
187. Your Perfection in weakness.

Good-Bye

Beauty and mystery interwoven in creation.

Life has overflowed with praises to the Maker for what I've witnessed this fall. Taken completely by surprise by the riches and fullness in my heart, words of joy and thanksgiving, awe and amazement, have poured out from these long silent lips.

::

I didn't expect to be so profoundly moved by the process of metamorphosis that these little creatures go through. Dear Man can testify to my lying in bed, words tripping over themselves trying to get out of my mouth, as I described the mystery and beauty of the little pods that housed a being in transition, my hands gesticulating to better demonstrate what could so poorly be expressed with words. This has been an experience I wouldn't trade for the world's riches!

So now, goodbye to our little friends, the ones who have shared the warmth of our home and are now finding their own place far, far away:

Good bye Autumn, our first emerger, so named because you were released on the first day of Autumn.

Good bye Falline, whose emergence from the chrysalis we were blessed to witness, but whose beautiful fall colours weren't to last. You, who died an untimely death in our backyard and have been put to rest in our butterfly garden. (Oh the lamenting that was heard from our yard that day!)

Good bye Aidan, our first male, you, who took off with a flourish, full of energy on a lovely warm day.

Good bye Buttercup, the monarch who we watched moment by moment as she changed from caterpillar to chrysalis, and who emerged on the Day of Thanks.

Good bye Wesley, the last to leave. You emerged while we were eating breakfast, your cage on the dining table, and still we didn't see the moment you broke through the chrysalis. You winged your way to the leaves of our backyard maple and waited there for hours before setting out for the south.

Papa God, thank You.

It's a Boy!

Our third monarch emerged this week. This one is a male. You can see in this first photo that there's a distinct spot along one of the marking lines on his open wings; that is the scent gland that is specific to males.

In the second photo, where his wings are folded and you see the underside, the spot isn't visible. Because of that, we thought we had another female for the first couple of hours after he emerged, as none of us saw him with his wings spread. It wasn't until I tagged him that I saw the scent spot. And it's a good thing I did take a closer look, otherwise he would have been labelled female on our tracking form, and who knows what that might have done to him!

This robust little fellow took to flight within minutes of being taken out of the rearing cage and tagged. I was about to transfer him to Brown Eyed Boy's fingers when he took to wing and soared into a nearby maple, at which point we lost sight of him. He must know that time is getting short to make the journey south to Mexico.

Life-Cycle

Since the dry-brush session at the WHHE meeting, The Ones I Love have been keen to add entries in the Nature Journals. Here's a quick sample:

Monarch life-cycle by My Girl (12). She identified
each stage with a number and then wrote about the stages on the lined page
beside the mounted dry-brush work.

Monarch life-cycle by Little Man (6). He took My
Girl's advice and used numbers as well, then dictated his narration about the
life-cycle while I acted as scribe.

Monarch chrysalis hanging from a Tropical Milkweed leaf, by My Girl, a few hours
before the butterfly emerged. It had changed from jade green to transparent with
the black and orange markings completely visible. In this painting My Girl is
trying to use some of the shading tips that S gave at the WHHE meeting.

Little Man's chrysalis.

Transformation Before Our Eyes

The day had been a slow one for school-work. We had the timer set for every ten minutes so we'd remember to send someone to the front porch to look at the "J-Man" and see if any changes had begun. He'd been hanging there for more than 36 hours, so we knew that the time was close. By mid-afternoon I had assigned the children to 5-minute watches: we were determined to witness this miracle of change!

The monarch larva, the milkweed caterpillar, spins a little silk platform underneath a leaf and then attaches itself to it by the rear end. There it hangs, taking the shape of a letter J (sometimes curling tighter into a U) for more than 24 hours before pupating.

By 4pm we could see definite changes in the caterpillar's shape, texture and colour. He was no longer the brilliant white, yellow, and black, but had taken on a greyer tinge, his yellow getting duller with a hint more green in it, and the white also duller than before. His little body seemed to be swelling, straining at the sections of its exoskeleton as he began to wriggle more. It appeared that he was uncomfortable. Not only that, but he had taken on a much straighter, stiffer posture.

For over an hour we watched as the caterpillar hung there, gradual changes continuing, but no real progress. We sat on the floor, on stools, on laps, wherever we could get a good view of the interior of the butterfly cage. We sat and watched. We waited. We exclaimed.

As my Dear Man drove in the driveway from picking up some groceries for supper, the action started, and we knew that God had saved this sight for him to share with us!

Before our eyes there appeared a tiny slit of green at the bend in the J, like a minuscule incision through the caterpillar's skin. As the skin gradually separated in a perfect straight line, more of the hidden body underneath pushed its way through. The soft, moist, lumpy green mass squeezed its way through the little opening, forcing it wider and longer.


Then the caterpillar began to wriggle and writhe. He was trying to press the exoskeleton upwards to release the new from that was underneath. We could see darkening at the base where he hung from the leaf as the skin accordioned, while more and more of the pale green was exposed at the head.





The wriggling and straining continued for almost an hour. Near the end of that time, the exoskeleton was completely compressed at the top of the soft, moist chrysalis and he began to swing and twist to push it off and away. It fell into a tidy pile on the floor of the cage, useless now, but once an essential part of his existence.



Freed from the constraints of the old skin, the little fellow continued to swing and bend. We imagined it was from the discomfort as the new exoskeleton, the chrysalis, began to shrink and harden around him. It was so flexible still, and yet we knew that in less than an hour it would be the same solid jade-green jewel we had admired in our other specimens.

Final Stages for Monarch Rearing

We managed to view our second-to-last caterpillar pupating this past week. What an event that was! (photos to follow later) And then, a few days later, the last caterpillar changed, too, but without an audience. I'm so thankful that we had the blessing of seeing the chrysalis form at least one time in this experience.
And now, a new monarch butterfly emerged today! This from the first caterpillar that pupated - while I was at the dentist - remember that?

I'm off to the park with the Ones I Love. I'll write more on my own time.

Link to Pictures of Opening Milkweed Pods

Barb, at Handbook of Nature Study, has a couple of terrific pictures of milkweed pods as part of her Outdoor Hour Challenges. We didn't see them open ourselves, so it was nice to be able to view it here.

Just Butterfly Photos...and the Ones I Love