Thanks everyone! I had no intentions of giving up; years could've passed before I removed that chrysalid! I'm just thrilled knowing that I didn't kill it by leaving it outside, LOL. I was kind of surprised to see so many cats so early (May), even though I have seen the BST butterflies. I'm just really upset that I didn't take them in sooner, which, I should've done. I would've had 18 instead of 1 (waaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh). Lesson hopefully learned! I haven't seen any monarchs yet, but I do keep checking the milkweeds. If I recall correctly, I did have monarch cats last June, naturally that I didn't collect in time :( I'll know better this year; I've got my containers ready to collect. Cathy; it's good to know that you overwinter them outside. I won't be so paranoid come this winter, even though I successfully overwintered one (and only one). At least I can feel confident that I just didn't get lucky... Susan; pupated in June and eclosed in May?!?!?! Wow! With everybody's different experiences here, it's just good to know how erratic their schedules are. I recall doing some BST pupa research last year, and someone said they had one in the pupa stage for something like a year and a half. That would've freaked me out ;)

"Flight Two broods; early May and then in late July/August with the adults flying throughout August. A third brood may occur in the southern counties (Ebner, 1970)." It depends on how cold your area gets. If it is warm in September, they might emerge in August. Some years areas get an additional brood, if the weather allows. Here is a link that might be useful: Black Swallowtail, Papilio polyxenes

I move my chrysalises to a different cage. I use a mesh laundry "bag", looks like a beach bag with mesh. I cover it with a beach towel, with clothes pins, and put it on my covered front porch. It worked well for me last year. They seemed to all eclose in the morning. I got to watch a few before I left for work. I stick the sticks into a block of flower foam to hold them upright. (see the bag of white beans I used to anchor it down? :) ) This year I'm using a small phone directory, but I think I'm going to go back to the bag-o-beans... The phone book wasn't heavy enough and I found it on it's side this morning. Lisa

I think the person who wrote the original post was waiting for the caterpillar to pupate. When I read the post, that was the impression I got. It can take several days for a BST to pupate after it has made its silk harness. After pupating, it can take 10 days or longer to eclose or come out of the chrysalis as an adult butterfly. If you find a cat, you can bring it in and feed it parsley or fennel or any other host plant listed in the FAQs for Black Swallowtails. If it's ready to pupate, give it something to climb up on. One really easy thing to do, is to tape a piece of paper towel to the side of the container for the cat to crawl up on to pupate. I use this method when raising a large group of BSTs. You can also use sticks as mentioned in other threads on raising BSTs. If you find a chrysalis, just leave it. If it's green, it will most likely eclose this fall. If it's brown, there's a good chance it will wait until next spring to eclose. Hope this helps. :) Sandy