Cathy,
I am smiling. Big smile. Sorry. My house is a MESS. Outside? Yard is FAB. Inside? EEK! NO ONE is allowed/permitted in our house. Period. Well, my mom and mother-in-law are, of course...but that is about it. ;P Hubby and I MUCH prefer to work OUTside than INside...which is why our house is a mess inside. Gardening is way more F-U-N and even though hubby is retired for over two years (and we said when he retired we'd have time for the INside! ha!!!) it just hasn't been done. Hey, some things are just NOT that important.

Okay, house issues aside...

Butterflies? I TOTALLY can relate! I sit on the ground when I collect eggs. Yep, otherwise bad back, bad neck, bad eyes, bad...you get the picture. I even lay on my back and stretch OUTSIDE!! You can see why I start fostering out eggs when I get to the 200+ mark. Right now, since I am leaving for a business trip, I've stopped collecting eggs even though I AM babysitting someone else's caterpillars!! Sheesh...can't stop, you know? (I did find and bring in three GST eggs, though...couldn't help myself since they were the first of the year!)

I am wondering if perhaps Gwynne would want some of those eggs of yours. She lives in Pennsylvania. I will email her lickety-split.

Have you checked my blog on how I 'do' eggs? It may be another possible method for you to try.

Have a glass of wine. Or, I'll drink one and think of you tonight. :) Cheers!

Here is a link that might be useful: Check 'Found an egg! What do I do now?'

Gwynne went nuts with the monarch raising last year and is only doing a limited amount this year. As diligently as I looked for those first eggs this year and as much as I complained about not finding any, I did learn that I can not handle more than a small amount at a time. I wish I could help but I have yet to come up with an effecient method of raising them myself. Believe me, I know the feeling when it starts being more of an obligation and not fun anymore.

Sorry about the BST egg. That is a bummer when something like that happens. I hope you find more.

Cathy,

I understand about the eggs. I wouldn't worry about it. The monarchs that lay those eggs are expecting their babies to make it on their own. You can help out with a few, but everyone is busy. Some of those will make it outside, that's how butterflies have made it for a very long time.

I have my opinion about the black swallowtail egg. They are VERY hard to overlook........you saw it once, I'm betting it's still there. Those caterpillars are easier to see. Wait a week and start hunting for a tiny black caterpillar, I have a hunch you will find it.

Elaine

Sherry, I figured you could probably relate to having so many eggs at once. :) Oh, thank goodness I'm not the only one with a messy house. That's my thing too...I love to be outside and hate housework. I know a few people who keep their house as neat as a pin and the women act like they actually enjoy keeping a tidy house. NOT ME! The further away from housework I am the better. I never was much of a housekeeper and have really been terrible with getting anything done inside lately since so much of my time is taken up taking care of the Monarchs. I'm just glad that we don't get much compnay or I'd be ashamed to have anyone come in here now the way it looks. Yeah, our outside looks great too. :-D If people going by could actually see our backyard and the garden, I'm sure they'd like it. We like it a lot. My husband says I took on a lot this year with all of this gardening and now the butterflies, and he says that I should let myself off the hook with the Monarchs. I guess it's become a compulsion with me that I feel like I have to find every egg that it out there. With all of these plants, I'm sure it takes me at least an hour every day just to look for eggs. I'd collect eggs sitting down too but it would be too hard to get back up. :) I still haven't found a good way to get them. I've been getting a mental picture of me on one of those carts with wheels that the mechanics at the garage use, but I don't think it would roll along too well in the garden. Ha.

Yes, I certainly can see why you start fostering out eggs when you reach the 200+ mark. I think I've reached that point and I feel like I'm in a daze half the time from lack of sleep. I try to load everybody up with lots of leaves before I go to bed to prevent them from having nothing to eat by the time I get back up, but it doesn't stop me from getting up and wondering if they are there starving. Hubby says I worry too much about them. He likes them too, but he says I act like they wouldn't live without me raising them. Well, I say back to him that they probably wouldn't! I've had spiders get some when I missed getting some tiny cats outside, and I know robber flies eat the cats because I witnessed that last year.

That must really be hard for you to stop collecting the eggs because of going on your business trip, and I really hope that they do okay outside. That's cute that your babysitting someone's cats for them. :) I don't blame your for bringing in those GST eggs though even though you aren't bringing in the Monarchs for now. If I ever get GST's here, I would certainly bring those inside.

If you emailed Gwynne, thanks for trying to adopt out the eggs for me, but I see from her reply that she has as many as she feels she can handle, and I can understand that. I really wouldn't mind raising a thousand a year if I had the plants for them and I wouldn't get hit all at once like has happened here. There seems to be no let-up. Now when I see one outside laying eggs, it's an automatic "OH NO!" that comes out of my mouth. I've gotten to where I almost feel like shooing them away. Haha.

I looked at your blog and it's very well put together with a lot of great information. I think I told my birding friends about it but I'll have to again sometime for people that didn't see me post about it the first time. Ha, they even wonder where I've been. I got emails saying, "Where are you?" Geez, try raising all of these cats and you'll be absent too! I don't think I've been on that website for almost two weeks, and I don't even get on here as much as I'd like.

Ya know, that sounds like a good idea, a glass of wine. Can I have two? How about ten? :-D Cheers, and I hope that you enjoyed yours and had a smile on your face thinking of me and my dilemma. :)

Cathy

Gwynne,
I totally understand, really. I think people should only take on as much as they feel that they can handle. I believe I've reached that point and am thinking about letting them on their own for awhile so I can kind of take a breather. I really hope I can get my garden finished by the end of this month. I mean, my gosh, here it is the end of July and it's not done! I even have annuals that I didn't plant yet. I'm kind of thinking what's the point now?

I'm like you and wish I could come up with an efficient way of raising the cats, something that doesn't consume 90% of my time. I'm either taking care of cats or I'm on this forum talking about it. Ha. What a limited life I lead. I can really relate to what you said about it feeling like an obligation and not fun anymore. I've been getting a lot of headaches (literally) and I think that's probably the reason, my lack of time to do anything else and I'm feeling enslaved by the cats. I shouldn't have to feel that way, and I think that if I can stop my compulsion of collecting eggs my headaches will probably go away.

Thanks, I'm sorry about that BST egg too. It really made me mad that I couldn't find it just such a short time after she laid it! ARG! I'll just hope that she shows up again and lays more. The Rue is there just waiting for her.

Cathy

Elaine,

Oh, I hope that you are right and I overlooked the egg. I thought I knew the spot where she laid it and I looked and looked and couldn't find it and even looked on the neighboring plants. It's just so hard to believe that something would make off with it that quickly!

I hope that I can just let the eggs outside and not worry about it. I'm sure some will make it on their own. It's just that I think of the ones that probably won't make it. Now if only I can push those last thoughts out of my head I'll be okay. I don't know how I got so wrapped up in this! I don't understand how everyone else does it unless they just decide that they've reached their limit and quit collecting the eggs. Lately I feel like I have no life and I haven't even gotten anything planted the last few days because of the Monarchs. It's just kind of ridiculous really.

I'll look at the Rue again after a week and I hope I'll see a little black cat. I thought that maybe she'd have laid more but if she did I can't find those either. Thanks for the reassurance.

Cathy

Cathy, I understand your feelings because I felt them too, last year. Now, mind you, I never had as many eggs as you do. But the feelings of being overwhelmed were the same. To top it off, I have a herniated disc. I have since been given muscle relaxants, but at that time, I could barely stand or walk too much. And there I was, standing for two hours a day, collecting leaves, washing leaves, feeding the caterpillars. To top it off, after my initial success, I had a lot that had OE and tachinid flies. I spent hours and hours on the care of these caterpillars only to have them not survive as butterflies. When I would go out collecting leaves, I would deliberately look for leaves without eggs. This was later in the season. As diligently as I tried to get leaves without eggs, I would always find some when I got home and since I had taken them already, I felt obligated to raise them and the cycle would begin again.

:)

Oh, the trials of raising butts...er, I mean butterflies!

Yesterday I was out searching (I know, I know!) I was SEARCHING for GST eggs. What am I thinking??? I spotted a ASSAASSIN bug munching away on a fly. YAY! We've had the most awful time this year with these regular ol' flies (I don't think our neighbor is picking up the dog doo since they're so busy with the construction on their house). I ran in to get my camera, got the pics, then smashed the Assassin bug. I did find a GST egg, which I promptly ended up losing when hubby came out to ask me to take pictures of his flowers. Easy come, easy go. HE was more upset over the loss of the egg! I then reminded him that HE would be in charge of 'cat sitting' next week. Response? "We NEED more GSTs around here." :)

Ahh...again, the trials of butts...

Flies are really bad here, too, Sherry! It's just awful and I think it is because of the rain (again; just blame the rain for everything). They are actually HORRID!

They get in my house and I stand between two rooms and try to get the flies in each room at the same time - hard to do.

I'm home full time now, so have more time to devote to raising butterflies. When I was working full time - no way! However, once the Monarchs come, I am not going to raise any other butterflies. I've done my part where they are concerned. Well, maybe pipevines if I get any more.

Susan

Gwynne, I think you're lucky that you didn't have as many eggs as I do or maybe you'd be nuts. I'm not quite there yet but it's getting to me. At least I know I'm not the only one who has these feelings. I could have handled 50 or 100 with not much problem, but now that I have at least 150 or maybe even 200 (I've lost track because they just keep coming!), I feel like I'm going around in circles. I just can't go fast enough. I never even went to bed last night at all, but I think I'd better get a few hours of sleep because I'm feeling really tired.

I was busy potting up more milkweed plants in cups and putting just-hatched cats on them. I've had to move a few more cats in jars because they're getting pretty big and I had 13 before that. Now I just noticed that some on the back porch are getting pretty big, so those will go in jars today. I probably have at least 30 or 40 tiny cats on the back porch that would have just hatched yesterday or today (didn't even get a chance to look). Those along with the other 5 or 6 dozen that are in the house will go into the cage within the next few days before I lose the rest of my sanity. Of course, the Monarchs will just keep laying eggs. It wouldn't be bad if they'd lay a couple dozen and then give me a break for a few days but it's constant laying every day. They obviously don't have any common sense or they wouldn't lay eggs on some of the plants that they do. Their offspring would never be able to make it very long on a plant that is only a few inches tall. I didn't even stop to think that they might lay on some small ones that I had started in a tray with 72 individual things in the tray. Only some of the plants came up and they aren't/weren't very big. I was watering them yesterday and noticed cats on them about an inch long. I guess what made me notice them was that the plants were all but gone. Apparently the cats had just kept moving from plant to plant chewing them down to nubbins and now they're sticks. So I brought those cats in and put them on plants that I just put in cups. I had dozens of plants sitting outside in plastic cups thinking that if I didn't get any Monarchs to lay on my big plants (this was before I had a herd of them show up), maybe they would lay on those. Also, I wanted to have extra. They've been laying on them ever since I sat them outside and they've just kept laying on them. As I'd find eggs on them, I'd bring them either in on the back porch or in the kitchen. I think DH is going to get annoyed soon because there are cups sitting all over the computer stand, on a stand beside it, and we are now unable to eat at the kitchen table because it's pretty full with cats on plants in cups. Well, I think one of us could eat there but not both. He already complained that we're running out of space to walk on the back porch. I'll admit, it is pretty cluttered. If I had a separate area to go with the Monarchs, I'd do that, but I don't.

You and I belong to the herniated disc club. I have one too. :( I had an MRI done last week and still don't know the exact results from it. Anyway, I keep plodding along.

Yeah, I'd have gotten discouraged having all that work like you did last year and then having a lot of them end up with OE and tachinid flies. Sheesh, well, hopefully this year is better for you. Ha, I know that feeling, going out trying to get leaves without eggs on them. Right now that's next to impossible, it seems. I'd feel obligated to raise the cats too if I'd go somewhere to collect leaves and come back with leaves that had cats on them. I've been finding very few cats this year compared to last year, and that's only because I'm collecting the eggs this year and whatever cats I find are small and from eggs that I missed before. I decided not to look down real low because it's just too much, so if an egg gets left behind and something happens to it, I guess I'll never know about it.

I'm hoping to have a little bit of a break coming up because someone said they'd take some eggs. I was going to send them to her next week when I'd find some but when I went out looking last evening I found a lot (gee, what a surprise...*rolls eyes*) and since it's one of my bigger amounts that I've found in a day, I think I'll just go ahead and mail them out today. She sounded excited to get the eggs, so I hope she's just as excited feeding all of those cats because she's going to have a lot of them. I feel like I have every Monarch in the county laying eggs here, but in reality it probably only is a few. I'm soon going to put up a NO VACANCY sign! Ha!
Cathy

Sherry & Susan,
I'll have to reply to you later. I'm so sleepy. zzzzzz
Cathy

Oh, wow, Cathy, I would go completely nuts. I dont have the space to rasie that many and I couldnt deal with even fifty eggs at one time. When I go out to get food, I only look for about four or so new eggs. It helps that the milkweed is not on my property so I dont feel obligated to look for them all. The three little patches that I look through have about 50 plants altogether, maybe less. And I may not go to each patch if I find eggs in the first one I look at. I am having a hard time coming up with quality food for the little ones. I know they are supposed to eat the more tender leaves but I just am not seeing that many of those. Get some rest, it sounds like you need it!