Hungry Hungry Monarch Caterpillars

I made an amazing discovery on Friday morning. We have a single milkweed plant growing in our yard, and I spotted a bunch of monarch caterpillars on it, eating their hearts out! It was an awesome sight and I was so excited. We love butterflies, and I've planted a number of nectar plants to feed them. However, our yard is not strong on host plants for the caterpillars. We need to rectify that.

I knew that the single plant wouldn't hold them for long, so my husband and I hopped on our bikes and went up the road to a spot where the milkweed grows in abundance. I cut some pieces off, tucked them in a plastic bag in my daysack (careful, the sap is ultra-sticky), and pedaled back home with the fresh take-out food for my brand new bugs.

I had explained to my husband that milkweed was all they would eat, but I don't think he believed me. When we arrived back in our yard, I spotted a caterpillar sitting on jewelweed nearby. I held out a leaf of milkweed, and it eagerly climbed aboard and began munching. My husband, round-eyed, watched the whole thing: "You are a WONDER," he said, amazed.

Let me stop for a second and ask a "did you know" kind of question: did you know that the leaves of the milkweed are toxic, and that by ingesting milkweed, the monarchs make themselves poisonous? Creatures who eat a monarch butterfly get sick and vomit. That's why the viceroy butterfly mimics the monarch, so that birds will think it is poisonous, and avoid it. Yeah, pretty cool, huh?

Anyway, this is how it came to be that I am now the proud mother to a bunch of baby cats; caterpillars, that is. You may see six of them on the plant in the photo above. There is at least one more snacking on the extra milkweed I brought, out of frame. They all appear to be very fat, sassy, and healthy. Hooray! They will make amazing butterflies.

I hope they make it. I plan to watch over them and do my best to help out where needed. Will I get to watch the show, as each one forms a chrysalis and makes the great transformation into a butterfly? Wouldn't that be awesome? I can only hope!

These may be very, very special babies indeed. For at least some of the monarchs born this time of year are members of the super generation, an especially long-lived crop of butterflies that live up to EIGHT TIMES longer than their parents or grandparents (that's why they're sometimes called the Methuselah generation) so that they can migrate south thousands of miles, heading for Mexico.

I do not understand the underlying miracles and magic that make this all possible. But I am amazed by it. I stand and watch in wonder. And I do know this: they will need lots of food to prepare for their long journey, so we will try our best to keep these hungry babies fed.

The soundtrack for these hungry critters has to include the word hungry, so here is another favorite Dirty Dancing tune (yes, we watched the movie again recently; can't you tell?): Eric Carmen's Hungry Eyes.

Bonus links about monarchs:
The monarch super generation
The amazing journey of the monarch butterflies
Butterflies weaponize milkweed toxins