Monarch Butterflies have followed me most of my life, as it turns out. I was born in Monterey, California when we owned a house in Pacific Grove...the Winter destination for the Monarchs West of the Rocky Mountains. Here on the East coast, the butterflies have a different flight pattern.
This egg I watched being delivered on a milkweed plant by a gorgeous female Monarch Butterfly, out in our Virginia yard on the 18th. I cut the stem and about half the plant and brought it inside to watch the unbelievably swift process from egg to wing. The egg hatched out today, less than 72 hours after it was attached to the underside of the leaf. The newly-hatched caterpillar has already eaten a tiny hole in the leaf, and the the big 1 1/2" caterpillar that I collected off of a milkweed on the 19th, split its caterpillar persona and became a chrysalis over the last 24 hours. Whew...so incredibly fast !
