Caterpillar update.

Well, I did quite a lot of caterpillar care this summer. We had a batch of black swallowtail butterflies hatch from the little guys I found on my parsley. But there were two that didn’t hatch. They ate, and pooped, and ate, and pooped, and they went to chrysalis, but they never hatched.

The question was posed: are they dead?

Well... from what I can tell (aka, Google search!), a dead chrysalis turns brown/black. (And I actually had the misfortune of encountering a dead monarch chrysalis out in the park, and the stench was incredible.) These guys, though, they haven’t done that. They’re just... sleeping. Apparently, with black swallowtails - if it’s late in the season, they just stay in there all winter and come back out... later. June?

That was a relief, but now I’m stuck with two chrysalises that are sleeping in, in a huge way. Pfff.

My friend Beth recently found that she had a black swallowtail cat on her parsley. Which really had me doing a triple-take. It’s October, f’goshsakes. Anyway, I stuck it in there with the two chrysalises to overwinter. It kind of reminded me of the Dawn Treader, not the crappy movie version, but the awesome and authentic story by C. S. Lewis. I’m going from memory, so I could be wrong, but... near the end, they found the last two lords asleep at a stone table. They had collected one lord from the island of darkness, or fear, or whatever, and he was so shaken up from being trapped there for so long that he wasn’t in a state to adventure forth anymore. They left him at the table with the other two and he fell asleep, to be woken later.


(Here he is with a sleeping chrysalis to his right. He may be getting ready to do the same since he's crawling on the ceiling and not interested in food anymore.)

Maybe a little dramatic to describe my little caterpillar situation, but I kinda like it.

There was also this red and black caterpillar with spikes:



I didn’t know what it was, but Beth had plenty of its host plant since it was some unknown weed that she was pulling out of the garden. I opted to take this one home, too, though it’s a bit of a mystery bug. The closest thing I can find to it is a Gulf Fritillary larva. The problem is that Gulf Fritillaries ONLY feed on passion flowers or passion vines. And I have no freaking clue what this plant is, but why would it be growing like a weed in Beth’s garden if it was a passion flower?

(Then again, what business does a black swallowtail cat have, being born in October?)

What a weird world it is. Anyway, I’m kinda excited to see what happens with my mystery cat. It’s still eating and pooping (actually it has gravity-defying turds that stick on the side of the container...), so I’m pretty optimistic that I’ll find out within the next few weeks.