Remember the fatty?
For several days he ate copious amounts of tomato leaves and started to turn brown. One morning we looked in on him and he appeared to be sick...or possibly dead. We don't know anything about the metamorphic process of the tomato hornworm, so we decided to do some research and see if he was dying or coming close to a chrysalis stage.
We discovered that hornworms need dirt in order to move into the chrysalis stage!
We promptly added dirt to the bottom of the jar and in a few seconds he had dug down in and was happily moving on with his life.
About a week later, we noticed that he had wiggled his way up and is sticking halfway out of the dirt. We're hoping that we'll see a sphinx moth soon!
While we are waiting to meet The Sphinx, we have enjoying watching this monarch caterpillar go through his life cycle.
Ethan found him on some milkweed on the way home from school.
He shed his skin, just like the Swallowtails, but attached himself to the papertowel we were using for a lid.
He was kind of hard to see way up there and definitely difficult to photograph. Luckily, Everly ripped off the papertowel lid while I wasn't watching and I was able to get a quick photo before replacing it and moving the jar to an Everly-free zone.
I am amazed by the beauty of the chrysalis. The gold trim!
Megan happened to be watching when he emerged from his chrysalis. It happens fast, so we were lucky to see it.
He was a beauty.
Now we wait for the rest of the swallowtails to emerge and we will consider ourselves finished with our caterpillar observations for the year.
I kinda want my jars and countertops back!
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