Triumph and tragedy July 10

A lot has happened in my Monarch quest since my last post!  I was out of town for 2 weekends over the holiday, and had to take my babies with me the first weekend, and leave them in the care of my capable daughter the second weekend.  The first weekend was spent with family in Iowa, where I spent time caterpillar/egg hunting with grand nephews and grand niece.  I came home with several additions to my menagerie.   The next weekend was spent at a cabin near Bemidji Mn, where I was also able to SAVE the Monarchs one caterpillar at a time!  I discovered a small clearing near our cabin that had recently been mowed, which sadly probably destroyed caterpillars and eggs, but there were many tiny plants beginning to grow back, and mama Monarch flitting from plant to plant laying her bounty.  There were eggs and baby caterpillars on nearly every plant.  Again I returned home to add to my ever growing caterpillar family!
Here's the tragedy part of the weekend; before we left I grabbed some milkweed from a spot I'd never picked before, and by Sunday afternoon I had 2 large cats that were vomiting up green goo (never a good thing)  I've written in past blogs about viruses and infections from wasps etc..... I really wasn't sure what was happening, and I euthanized 4 big caterpillars. So I turned to my Facebook group for advice, a couple people said it sounded like pesticide poisoning.  That hadn't occurred to me!  SO LESSON LEARNED....don't pick unfamiliar milkweed, even if it is nearby and easy to get to, AND you're never so experienced that you don't need help from others sometimes!  So, Monday AM bright and early I went to get fresh Milkweed, threw out all the stuff that was in my big enclosure, then moved the surviving cats to the fresh Milkweed and they almost immediately came back to life!  I still lost 3 more that I think were just to sick to recover, time will tell if the others will recover, but they seem to be acting and eating normally again!

Another first for me....I had a caterpillar that was on the side of my glass aquarium, and it looked like it was planning to try to spin it's Chrysalis there, I knew that the Chrysalis would be deformed on one side, so I pulled it off.  THE Caterpillar curled up on the bottom of the enclosure and I was sure I'd killed it, but nature (and the caterpillar) had other ideas, and much to my astonishment it spun on the bottom of the aquarium!  Yes, it's still deformed, but I didn't even know that was possible.  I hung it up, and so far it seems like it may develop normally.  Again, time will tell if it ecloses and is able to fly, I'll report on that next blog! To be continued.....

Eggs saved from my neighbors yard

5 huge boquets of milkweed saved from certain destruction!
One more triumph....
There is a house in my neighborhood that has milkweed in their yard. ...a lot of milkweed!  Last year at the end of July they cut it down, and I drove by one day and it was all in the trash!  I almost stopped and knocked on their door, but didn't ..... fast forward to this year, I watched those milkweed begin to grow again.  This time when they cut them down again in early June I stopped and pleaded with them to not cut them mid season. I saved 7 5th in star cats out of the destroyed pile of dead milkweed,  3 weeks later, end of June, they cut them again, so today (July 10) I stopped again, knocked on the door and asked if I could pull it for them, before they could weedwack it again.   I saved 35 eggs, 3 large cats, and 16 babies!

So it's been a very busy week of triumphs and tragedy in my caterpillar kingdom.  I may be in over my head with trying to SAVE all these caterpillars, but I'll do my best to give them a better shot at surviving then I believe they would have had otherwise.  So as always I continue to SAVE the Monarch