Love this info. A co-worker of mine who is an avid outdoorsmen, brought in several last year in mason jars that we can watched transform from caterpillar, to the final beautiful monarch. Which we released at work. When my children were younger, we took them to Paul Smith College in the Saranacs, NY to there nature preserve. They had a butterfly house there. They told us that we had arrived at the right moment, the monarchs were just about to hatch. We stood in awe, as the opend the cocoon, unfolded their wings, pumped them up and tried them out. I have been hooked ever since. I have a dozen or so in my back yard every evening. I wintersowed butterfly weed this past winter, transplanted in my garden and found 6 cats out there had munched the poor plant to nothing. We brought 2 in the house, my 19 year old daughter wanted to raise one to release it and one for my outdoorsmen co-worker. He has to forest around in fields for hours trying to find his. He could not believe that we had so many in out back yard. I had an extra butterfly weed plant that I brought to him for his back yard. He was so excited, and still is having a hard time grasping that they eat butterfly weed. He is of the school that they only can be found on the old fashioned milkweed. Everybody at work will walk by and check on the jar, and stop what they are doing to wander outside to watch in amazement when it finds its wings and flies away. Everyone should experience this with their children

Socks, yes, those are what is left of paper bags. When I have cats approaching the end of their fifth instar, I put them in grocery bags with fresh leaves and tape the top closed. Leave them for a few days and then carefully cut the top with scissors or a letter opener. Then just cut around whoever is hanging out. If they are still soft or haven't turned green, leave them alone until the green chrysalis is hard. Liz, yes, when they turn dark, I take them outside. Or, I might put them back in the tent until there are several ready to release and release them together. I want to take a group of them to release at a nearby public garden, but haven't figured out how to transfer them there.

I sure hope so. I really admire what all of you are doing. I don't think I am cut out for dealing with that stuff. So I will just keep planting host plants, make cages around the hostas so the deer don't eat the chrysallis, buy emergency parsley and brush away spider webs on my garage wall where the Gulf fritillary caterpillars are still looking for spots. Hope it will help a bit. Sorry about sounding so down, this poor butterfly is still stuck in my head. And I drove by a place today I have been driving by for 20 years. There was a farm with cows and a nice pond. They just took down the beautiful huge trees for a retail development.

I didn't know what tachinid flies look like, so I googled it and found this 11 second video. If I had seen a fly like that around my milkweed, I'd think it was a common housefly and not be concerned. I know it's just nature, but it's very upsetting; especially since I just lost a chrysalis I was excited about. But now I'm educated. I wonder if it's possible to get the fly egg off the caterpillar if you see one? Tachinid fly on caterpillar Deanna