Sunday, August 7, 2011

Butterfly Update No. 3

The new home of our Black Swallowtail Butterfly caterpillars—indoors. We began with three. In other words, we could actually detect three caterpillars when we brought the plant indoors into the sunroom. Soon we discovered that we had five—and, indeed, we may have more. They are shown in sequence here, from the bottom of the plant to the top. The small one is the last discovered, and obviously a youngster.






To those who are getting tired of this story, our apologies. But in truth these matters are at least as interesting to us as “culture,” “society,” “art,” “history,” “language” and all the rest. First-timers to this thematic may wish to pursue the links below, which go backward in time.

  • Initial discovery of Black Swallowtail caterpillars (link).
  • The story of their initial development, outdoors, and loss to birds (link)
  • Last year's story—and the famed Aristo! (link)
The pictures shown here were taken today. When we brought in the plant five days ago, the caterpillars were much smaller than the smallest one I show here today. These tiny things develop rather rapidly!

3 comments:

  1. I like the story. I sort of fancy that it is a present-day story of Adam and Eve, long after they went to dwell East of Eden, attempting to husband the various new life forms that they come across...

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  2. Tired of the caterpillars? Never! This is infinitely more meaningful than the debt-limit debate that dominated the so-called "news" for the last several months.

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  3. Oh, I'm with Montag and John. Keep the caterpillar and butterfly updates coming!

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