Caterpillar

Monty’s summer travels

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A couple of weeks ago, I pulled a milkweed plant out of the raised garden bed and spotted a monarch caterpillar. It was its lucky day. The grandkids were coming and it would be an intetesting exhibit. First thing they did was name it Monty.

That’s a hand not a mouth in the background

It lived in a large mason jar, initially with a cheesecloth lid. Last year I thought I had found monarch eggs, but when they started walking, realized they were actually aphids and not eggs at all.

We had an ample supply of milkweed leaves and Monty grew to about 2 inches in ten days.

Then the grandkids went home and we went on a vacation of our own. Monty came with us. Grandkids received updates.

Just as predicted, he climbed to the ceiling, now a coffee filter, and attached itself upside down. It hung like that for a day and then, while we slept, formed its chrysalis.

We came home only to turn around and go camping for a couple of days. It takes 10-14 days for the butterfly to emerge. We had an opportunity, while it dissolved and metamorphosed, and left it home on its own.

Since we couldn’t be sure we would be here when it emerges, it had to head back to nature. I read it could be easily moved because there was a fairly substantial tuft of silk securing it to the coffee filter.

I pried it off and secured it to a crabapple branch with dental floss.

I’ve seen a Monarch chrysalis before and remembered the delicate gold edging. But the best is yet to come.

So it is winter

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It’s official. It begins December 21 here, unlike Australia, where the season begins on the first day of the month and six months later (or earlier). Happy holidays and winter solstice.
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There’s a nor’easter headed our way and we may get about a foot of snow. I’m excited because I’m going to ski the old logging roads on our property. Last year I was in a cast and the year before I spent the Australian summer on Deal Island.

I was surprised to find this little guy on our basement stairs yesterday.

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He rivals Punxsutawney Phil in weather folklore. It’s a Banded Woolly Bear, an arctic caterpillar, and the thickness of its middle stripe is rumored to predict winter’s severity. Thick is mild. What’s remarkable is it freezes solid during the winter. It may spend up to 14 years, freezing and defrosting, before it becomes a moth.

It may be frozen now because the temperature is finally seasonally cold and this morning I found it curled into a ball.

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It produces a “cryoprotectant” to preserve its tissues after its heart stops beating and its blood freezes solid! Impressive. It has a sad life cycle though. Years as a caterpillar, freezing over the winter, and when it’s finally eaten its fill, it emerges as a moth and then only lives a few days to find its mate before it dies.

Groundhogs have it easy.