Monarch caterpillar Number One finally hatched today, but it did not go well. The butterfly's wings never filled out and it was never able to fly.
Number One was the caterpillar that formed its chrysalis on the edge of the cage's zipper; the first time we opened the cage to add some Asclepia leaves for the other caterpillars to eat, the silk button began to unravel and the chrysalis was left hanging by a thread.
About a week ago the chrysalis fell off the cage when we were inserting more new Asclepia leaves, so I made an armature that we were able to tie the chrysalis to with cotton thread to keep it off the floor of the cage.
When the butterfly hatched today, it landed on its back on the floor of the cage and seemed to be struggling to grasp something with its feet, so I took the stick that I had used for the armature and let it grasp the stick while I moved it over to the leaves of the Jacaranda. The butterfly kept trying to move its wings, but they remained crumpled and never filled out properly.
With other Monarch butterflies we've watched hatch, it usually only takes about an hour for the wings to fill out, so I knew this one was in trouble when that didn't happen. Live Monarch.com indicates that crumpled wings can mean that we might have an outbreak of bacteria, or that the pupae was very stressed during the pupation process. I'm hoping that it's the latter and that the other four chrysalises will be O.K.
As Cindy says, we're still learning about all this. Meanwhile, I'm really bummed that it didn't work out for Number One.
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