It's Caterpillar Time

We went to another metro park yesterday with the intentions of attending a class for the kids. There were SO many kids there, though, that it just wasn't fun. So, we skipped out on the class and enjoyed the park itself.

They raise monarchs to exhibit at this park. We spent some time in the monarch house observing the monarchs. We got to see a couple females lay their eggs on the milkweed. That was pretty cool.

The butterflies loved the lantana most of all.

They also loved Danielle. This guy landed there all by himself. It took all Tyler's strength to hold himself back from knocking it off her head.

After talking to one of the naturalists for awhile, she kindly offered to send some caterpillars home with us for our milkweed! We don't have any caterpillars yet, so we were really excited. She gave us 6 or 7 caterpillars and an egg (which hatched this morning). We used a small, dry paintbrush to move the teeny tiny little caterpillars from the old leaves onto our plant.

We were happy to see they made the adjustment and had already started chomping away on the milkweed when we checked on them a short time later.

Our biggest threat is the mosquito fogging. Last year it killed almost all our caterpillars. This year I think I'm on top of that. I've talked to the city official in charge of the fogging and think I understand the schedule. I've done a little research and, although I can't find a lot on the subject, I think just covering the plants with plastic for the duration of the fogging (& for a couple hours afterward) should be enough to protect most of the caterpillars. They fogged tonight, so I ought to know pretty quickly if this method will be successful.