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| Mr. Upside Down |
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| Caterpillar Attached To Fence |
About five minutes after I hit the "publish" button for the previous post, Cindy came flying downstairs and said the upside down Monarch caterpillar on the fence was forming the chrysalis. We raced outside and sure enough, the chrysalis had started to form.
We had been worried that the caterpillar was looking pretty bad; its antennae were drooping and it seemed to be shriveling up and wasn't moving very much. However, as the chrysalis formed, we discovered that the reason the caterpillar had been looking bad was that the whole head part of the caterpillar's skin drops off and reveals the chrysalis beneath it. We found the shriveled up skin on the ground below the chrysalis.
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| Chrysalis Forming |
We could even see traces of the butterfly wings beginning to form before the chrysalis shell hardened to the beautiful jade green color. It's an amazing process. I was so interested in watching this one because it was easy to see what was happening (or not happening) because of the location the caterpillar had chosen.
So maybe in a couple of weeks we can watch this one and the two on the Bougainvillea hatch into Monarch butterflies.
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