So we're trying our hand at raising Monarch butterflies, it's been a long arc to get here bits and pieces slowly falling into place. The winding trail you painstakingly discover while picking your way up the mountain that looks perfectly obvious when you look back.
A number of years ago we saw an incredible Monarch migration film in the IMAX in the Royal Victoria museum called "Flight of the Butterflies", the footage is incredible!
Then we ended up accidentally raising Giant Swallowtails when they chose our tiny Calamansi bush as a host and likely would have decimated it had we not rescued it (and them) lol.
Then we started kicking around the idea of having a butterfly garden which finally became a reality when we got around to planting the front planter box, and decided to help boost the monarch population.
It's been super cool don't get me wrong - but these guys are hard! They're idiots, they wander all over the place, get stuck, and they're way harder to keep track of despite being fricken yellow! They fall off of leaves... one batch of them got sick from one of the new plants and oozed and died, and apparently there's a parasite you have to watch out for :( The giant swallowtails were sooooo much easier and more efficient, they basically stake out a leaf, start at the tip of it and work their way back until they're done. These guys nibble here and there, sometimes chewing on the stem of the leaf before they venture out and eat half of it, and then the leaf falls off because they sabotaged themselves. Idiots...
We we starting to think they were pretty boring until we discovered that they don't like the sound of my voice... and that their angry caterpillar face looked like this! As you can see we have angry teenage caterpillars lol
A number of years ago we saw an incredible Monarch migration film in the IMAX in the Royal Victoria museum called "Flight of the Butterflies", the footage is incredible!
Then we ended up accidentally raising Giant Swallowtails when they chose our tiny Calamansi bush as a host and likely would have decimated it had we not rescued it (and them) lol.
Then we started kicking around the idea of having a butterfly garden which finally became a reality when we got around to planting the front planter box, and decided to help boost the monarch population.
It's been super cool don't get me wrong - but these guys are hard! They're idiots, they wander all over the place, get stuck, and they're way harder to keep track of despite being fricken yellow! They fall off of leaves... one batch of them got sick from one of the new plants and oozed and died, and apparently there's a parasite you have to watch out for :( The giant swallowtails were sooooo much easier and more efficient, they basically stake out a leaf, start at the tip of it and work their way back until they're done. These guys nibble here and there, sometimes chewing on the stem of the leaf before they venture out and eat half of it, and then the leaf falls off because they sabotaged themselves. Idiots...
We we starting to think they were pretty boring until we discovered that they don't like the sound of my voice... and that their angry caterpillar face looked like this! As you can see we have angry teenage caterpillars lol
No comments:
Post a Comment