Butterfly! 8/11/15

First Butterfly

        Yesterday the first butterfly of my second round of raising emerged from it's chrysalis. And to think I took a picture of her when I first found her! I was in fact a female Monarch who was released into my mothers brilliant garden.

The first day I found her...

And yesterday when she was released.

        Many people ask me, how do I know the gender? I was taught only two years ago that male Monarchs have a raised bump on their lower wings that acts as a scent gland to attract a mate. When a male hatches, I will try my best to show a close up of the scent gland.

        I always talk like there is two rounds of caterpillars every year, but I honestly don't know if that's entirely true. I like to do it that way, because it gives me a break and a chance to clean my enclosure, but I can find eggs and tiny caterpillars all summer long. There definitely is though a noticeable number of Monarchs in the beginning of spring and in the middle versus any other time in the summer. Therefore I learned to work around this noticeable change and turned it into two rounds.

        On the 9th my older brother really wanted to find a caterpillar to call his own. He wanted to name it Heimlich after the caterpillar from the Pixar movie "Bugs' Life." He always tries to help me find caterpillars and never seems to have the eye for it. But regardless, we went out searching for his caterpillar. What do you know! He found a very large caterpillar and I found two smaller ones. I couldn't resist bringing all three home so I could care for them.

Heimlich, who today is in a Hanging J.

My two babies.

        So as of today there are nine pupae on the top of the enclosure and one very special Hanging J. Not to mention the four caterpillars still munching away on the milkweed. Again, I'm missing one! I don't understand if I can't count correctly or if something is happening to them. It'll probably turn up at some point. If not, fifteen is still a good number! I'm definitely happy with how many I have had this year; thirteen in round one and hopefully fifteen in round two.

        I don't have any other news today. Until next time :)