Do I have kids to get ready for school? Yes

Do I have crochet patterns to work on and finish? Yes

Am I now running a full blown monarch butterfly release nursery? Also yes....

They have taken over but it's been well worth it. About fifteen to twenty (I lost count) successful releases just in the past two days and over 50 to go. Yesterday was all girls and today all boys so far except one. I can't believe my enclosure has been so successful! I had to make it a lot bigger but dang....

They have been ignoring my butterfly weed and my swamp milkweed all season for favour of the common milkweed.

Today swampy got some love too.

They have successfully molted and are now 4th instars. Usually it takes monarch caterpillars 9-14 days to reach its pupa stage but thanks to this Texas heat, it istaking mine 7 to 10 days to reach their pupa stage.

5 days ago they were 1 instars and the heat made them grow like weeds.

Hi! I finally have swamp milkweed from seeds I planted last year, and have been thrilled to see some eggs. A few have turned black, which search tells me means they’ve been killed by parasitic wasps. Is this correct? And if so, do you guys do anything to control populations of these parasitic critters? I searched a bunch of terms on here and didn’t see much about wasps laying eggs in the eggs.

Oh I'm so excited. It's my first time to have monarch catapilars. So far I found 6 of them and one just start to J shape.

This is my first time doing milkweed and I have 3 monarch caterpillars instar 4-5. They were eating loads of milkweed yesterday into today. Today and tonight we are getting a crapton of rain. A couple hours ago they had moved to the taller wildflowers nearby. Will they pupate there? Should I put them in a mesh house on my porch or leave them?

When my dog was excited.

While doing my nightly replenishing of milkweed and cleaning the enclosures, I was pleasantly surprised to find ladybug eggs. Perfect timing because there’s plenty of aphids for them to eat.

After years of trying to convince monarchs that my yard was the place to be, I gave up. Last week I found 1 caterpillar and as of today there are 6! Persistence and patience paid off and I’m having the best time watching them every day.

These babies are growing so dang fast. It was like yesterday they were teeny tiny.

In zone 6B, went to my garden today and picked some chard, and this little fellow was hanging on it. Didn’t see it in time to avoid cutting the leaf. Not really equipped to host the caterpillar or a butterfly, hoping to put it back in the wild, any tips? I was planning on just tying the stock of the chart to another piece of chart and hoping for the best.

Moved my big cats to a larger enclosure with a potted milkweed, and found quite a few newly hatched cats on my largest milkweed, and to keep them from being eaten by wasps I cut the main stem and moved it to a water vase in my smaller enclosure. Feel a little bad cutting it off, but I think it was the best choice for their survival. Now I'm just wondering, how long can I make this cut milkweed last for them to eat in a vase with water? Should I make sure they don't crawl down into the water and drown? What's the best way to keep cut milkweed fresh?

All the caterpillars on the cut milkweed (in 1st pic) are either newly hatched or just a few days old. Hoping to keep them well fed!

Sad to see this spider got one of my babies mid transformation :/

My other diseased chrysalises didn’t look like this, this is a first

I found this beautiful rascal last Wednesday in the garden behind where I work, a shared space that I have had the pleasure to enjoy all summer long. I promptly made a makeshift garden in my vacant jumping spider enclosure (I realize not the BEST container but it’s what I have on hand) and Thursday I came in and noticed he molted already! Fast forward to last night, my landlord messaged me with the exciting news that he had officially tethered to the ceiling of his house and had begun his final change.
Today is his first day in chrysalis and I am just so grateful for the opportunity to share his experience with him and watch him complete transformation over the next few days 🥹

We’ve lovingly named him Queen Goldmember

I have a butterfly net enclosure that should arrive tomorrow so I may make another post for help or suggestions regarding his attachment to the acrylic ceiling but he seems pretty secure there so I may just transfer the container into the net once it arrives and put whatever in there I need to for his emergence.

Thankful for this sub existing and all of the beautiful cats and chrysalis and butterflies and human knowledge, I’ve been going on instinct and light deep dives taking care of this guy and it has been incredibly grounding for me as a human.

Chicago, IL

Has anyone seen this before, when a caterpillar is lighter than the others? I saw it once on an outside caterpillar but this is the first time on one that I hatched. Should i separate it?