MY BOGGY BLOG: find your way through the murk

003.htm

Last night I spent three hours watching a caterpillar, waiting for it
to turn into a cocoon. You see, we've been raising Monarch butterflies
for the last few summers, finding eggs or tiny caterpillars on our
milkweed plant in the garden. Usually we have one caterpillar at a
time, feed it more milkweed leaves and watch it grow-- amazingly fast.
Then it cocoons, emerges as a butterfly after a week or so, and we
have fun letting the butterfly sit on or fingers until it flies away.

This summer, we found five eggs at once and decided to let them all
come into our aquarium. Only four of them hatched, and we had four fat
and hungry black-yellow-white striped caterpillars. Two of them
attached to the screen lid of the aquarium, and were all-of-a-sudden
chrysalis. The other two were catching up, still eating and pooping in
great quantities, and then they too attached themselves to the lid,
and started hanging like little Js, comma-style, last night. I came in
from watering the garden at 9:00 pm to find DH peering into the cage,
and the caterpillars would be still, then writhe a bit, then be still.
I really wanted to see them go from caterpillar to chrysalis, because
I've had the process described to me and I never could picture it.
Hence, I developed quite a good crick in my neck, peering into the
aquarium for three hours before finally giving up at midnight and
going to bed. I was sure they would go through their transformation
the minute I left!

But this morning, they were still caterpillar-commas. I went off to
the farmer's market and came back. Commas still! But I sat down and
watched for another half hour, and there seemed to be some changes
happening. A lot more gentle wriggles, just enough to keep me
watching. Then one of them got straighter, and his tail end (attached
to the screen) began pulsing up and down in a very purposeful fashion.
The pulses got more forceful, and after about 30 seconds the skin on
the back of the "neck" (the outward curve of the comma) split in half,
and you could see the green of the chrysalis (actually it's the pupa
at this stage) coming through the split. After much writhing and
wrenching, the dry striped skin of the caterpillar worked it's way up
to the tail, and the green pupa twirled and twirled until the skin
fell off. The pupa looked like the chrysalis was covering about the
bottom third of it, an opaque sea-mist green, and the top half of the
pupa looked yellowish and transparent enough to see a striped creature
inside. The opaque-greenness eventually creeped higher and higher up
the pupa (with more wriggling). It probably took 20 minutes for the
pupa to look like a regular opaque chrysalis. It was really an amazing
process to witness!

DH had been asleep through this transformation, but the other
caterpillar looked like it was on the brink, so I called him down.
After about 10 minutes, it started pulsing at its tail end. He got to
see it! He took some digital photos, so if they turn out, I'll post a
link here.

And now I have a writing marathon to get going on!

Posted by sapphire at August 9, 2003 12:00 AM