I'm fixing to go out and get more sweetbay leaves for the still eating sweetbay cats [I know that "fixing" isn't the proper word here, but sometimes I like to type like I talk :)] even though they look big enough to pupate to me! Here's one of them - Sherry

Sandy, As you know I read some of the threads now and then even though IÂm not logged in anymore. But I just had to log on when I saw this thread by you this morning as it made me smile. Naming your lady Cercropia Celeste brings up a little story About 35 years ago while collecting at a place called LambÂs Canyon high on the east slope of the Rockies in Utah my ex, "Celeste", who was up the canyon a ways from me out of sight let out a scream that could raise the dead (and as it turned out stopped all plant growth in the canyon for two years). I dropped and ran thinking she had fallen off a cliff, stepped on a rattlesnake, was being eaten by a bear or ???. Found her happily picking last instar H. cercropia cats off what little was left of a fair sized Populus tremuloides tree. All this ruckus from a normally dignified, quiet and reserved lady over a few cats? She had reared hundreds of Cercropia that I brought home before and from home mating, but these were the first of their cats she had ever found on her own out in nature. BTW, I went through similar with each new (for her) discovered species every place we traveled to. I once told her an earthquake in California was probably her fault because we were collecting up on Mount Tantalus in Hawaii when she found her first "wild" Vanessa tameamea cats the same day that California shook. My standard "calling" set up for the big silk moth females was a 3# coffee can cut open on both ends, 1" square hardware cloth covering the ends, and a wire or heavy twine bail that allowed the can to be hung horizontal from tree branches, etc anyplace I wanted to hang them. Cercropia is a species that mostly flies in the later wee hours of the night before day break, so they do not need to be out in the heat of the day and first light is a good time to check the cages for suitors. Along the lines of what Sherry said, they can be moved to a quiet place and left to separate on their own. I liked to lightly spray paper bags with clean water before putting a single female in each bag, then position the bags close to a light source on one side. This same "technique" works well for placing a male and female in the same bag to mate. The bags sure make it easy to cut the ovum apart in batches for either raising, distributing in nature or sharing with friends. All for now gang Larry

Ooo, thanks for the info, NaturesFolly! From the info you sent, I'd say Black Swallowtail is a winner. :) I'm also relieved to see that the half-silk half-caterpillar look it has going on seems to be normal and that I didn't interrupt its creation of a cocoon. I've never actually seen one of these butterflies around here ever. The most I ever see is the occasional yellow butterfly or monarch, and those are a rare sight where I live. According to that site, they like to lay eggs on parsley and if that's true, this one sure crawled a long way before creating a cocoon. Where I found it is pretty far away from the parsley in the yard. I'm wondering now if this would be considered a "late summer" butterfly and if I'll need to keep it over the winter. Should I attempt to suspend it from a branch in its jar or will it be able to get out of its cocoon if it's laying on a handful of grass? Also, thanks to larry gene for identification of the furry caterpillars. Those are definitely the ones I occasionally see in the backyard in the fall (for some reason, they really seem to like being in the sand too).

Gaby, Your BFs will be OK. You didn't do the wrong thing. Enjoy raising them and releasing them. They'll make it at least to my neck of the woods! I can't remember when the big migration starts but here's a link to the Monarch Watch site which will allow you to track migration. Sandy Here is a link that might be useful: Fall Migration