Codependent to Caterpillars

Monarch Butterfly Caterpillar on Asclepia

That would be us.  After the fiasco of the Monarch butterfly caterpillars on the Asclepia bush in the back yard, when the Scrub Jays picked off the last of the Monarch caterpillars, we moved that bush to the front yard and ran out and bought three more small Asclepias because a new lot of caterpillars were rapidly stripping what was left of the leaves off the original bush.  Then more Monarchs visited the new bushes and laid eggs.

Asclepia Protective Fencing

We originally tried to protect the new caterpillars by using some plastic fencing around the bush, thinking that critters were getting at them, but we quickly discovered that the caterpillars were getting confused and climbing on the green fencing instead of staying on the Asclepia.  We were concerned that they would not find their way back to the Asclepia to get the food they need to thrive, so we took it off and that was the end of the protective fencing  experiment.  It looked pretty peculiar anyway, so we weren't sorry to see it go.  I can't figure out how to re-size this picture, but it's easy to see how ugly it was.

Since we moved the old plant and the three new ones to the front yard, we've had a resurgence of the caterpillars.  I counted seventeen of them one day last week.  Most of them seem to have survived the heavy rains of the last week.

The problem recently has been that all four of the plants, in addition to losing leaves to the voracious appetite of the caterpillars, were heavily infested with aphids.  There were also several very happy Lady Bugs, busily chowing down on the aphid buffet, but they really couldn't really keep up with the numerous aphids, which would eventually kill the plants unless we do something about them.

So today Cindy farmed out about ten of the larva to a neighbor who also has Asclepia, bought a couple of new Asclepia plants, complete with their own caterpillars, moved the remaining four of our caterpillars to the new plants, and cleaned the aphids off the first group of plants.  She put the new plants next to the Bougainvillea so that the caterpillars have something to climb up on to form their chrysalises.  Apparently they prefer to create the chrysalis on some other plant, which is probably wise considering how likely it is that one of their fellow caterpillars would eat the Asclepia leaf the chrysalis was on.  Now they have a place to make the chrysalises, so we're hoping we'll eventually see the whole Monarch butterfly process.