When Caterpillars Escape, or Exciting Entomolgical News Part II
My second piece of recent bug news this is much less painful. For the second summer in a row, M has a butterfly farm. A butterfly farm is basically a big mesh box that is large enough to hold some plants. When M finds caterpillars or caterpillar eggs, she transfers them to a plan inside the mesh box, which protects said caterpillars from predators. If all goes well, the caterpillars have a comparatively stress free existence inside the box and turn into butterflies, which are then released into the wild.
Last summer M had some milkweed and found a couple of monarch butterfly caterpillars, which ended up hatching successfully. This summer has not been great for milkweed in general, but her dill attracted some swallowtail butterflies. She was able to transfer five swallowtail caterpillars into the butterfly farm. The caterpillars are green with specks and actually quite pretty.
One thing they don't tell you is that caterpillars poop a lot. The tray she put at the bottom of the farm had a lot of speckles that were not on it at the beginning. This is not totally surprising because these five caterpillars ate a ton. The dill she put in the farm was decimated. She ended up having to get more dill from her friend Beth. She then supplemented that with Queen Anne's Lace and even some store bought parsley. They weren't kidding about the caterpillars being hungry.
M's butterfly farm has an open top with a mesh top that you drape over the hole. Fancier models have a zip top. We may have to invest in one like that for next year, because each of the five caterpillars crawled out from under the cover to escape the farm once they got big enough to spin a chrysalis. Most of these butterflies ended up on the plants closets to the butterfly farm. One is safely ensconced in a chrysalis hanging off of the venetian blinds in that room. The first and largest caterpillar managed to disappear completely, and will presumably reappear in butterfly form at some point soon.
Last summer M had some milkweed and found a couple of monarch butterfly caterpillars, which ended up hatching successfully. This summer has not been great for milkweed in general, but her dill attracted some swallowtail butterflies. She was able to transfer five swallowtail caterpillars into the butterfly farm. The caterpillars are green with specks and actually quite pretty.
One thing they don't tell you is that caterpillars poop a lot. The tray she put at the bottom of the farm had a lot of speckles that were not on it at the beginning. This is not totally surprising because these five caterpillars ate a ton. The dill she put in the farm was decimated. She ended up having to get more dill from her friend Beth. She then supplemented that with Queen Anne's Lace and even some store bought parsley. They weren't kidding about the caterpillars being hungry.
M's butterfly farm has an open top with a mesh top that you drape over the hole. Fancier models have a zip top. We may have to invest in one like that for next year, because each of the five caterpillars crawled out from under the cover to escape the farm once they got big enough to spin a chrysalis. Most of these butterflies ended up on the plants closets to the butterfly farm. One is safely ensconced in a chrysalis hanging off of the venetian blinds in that room. The first and largest caterpillar managed to disappear completely, and will presumably reappear in butterfly form at some point soon.