on the verge

Last week, we were checking on some seedlings near the butterfly garden, and Lucia spotted a monarch caterpillar on the hose. We could see the leaves that it had munched, so perhaps it fell off to the ground and was working it's way back up.

Dante found a big plastic jar, loaded it up with milkweed leaves and we watched it eat and eat until it climbed to the top of one leaf, shimmied out of it's skin and made a chrysalis. Last year we'd taken one of these with us to Lake George so it wouldn't hatch while we weren't around to release it, but I think all the movement of travel had an adverse effect on the creature and it didn't ever hatch. This time we've been careful not to move the jar, and while the chrysalis has been green with the beautiful band of gold dots, tonight it has begun to be to transparent and we can see the butterfly within! So exciting! Somewhere I have a link to a site that has a blow-by-blow pictorial of the monarch's transformation so you can see more stages. But for now, I offer this blurry evidence: