I prefer to collect Monarchs as either eggs or very small instars. Haven't had very good luck with larger cats, they just don't seem to thrive inside. Figure that if a 4th or 5th instar has made it that far in the "field", they probably have a good chance to make it to chrysalis. After finding an egg, I cut off a good sized piece or pick off the whole leaf that contains the egg, and lay them out on a damp paper towel with the egg side up. This helps to keep the leaf fresh. I usually spritz the towel every morning. Just be cautious that it's not too wet - the leaf can mold. The leaf may wilt a bit, but it doesn't dry up to a crisp. It's easy to tell when the egg is going to hatch - they turn greyish/brown beforehand. When the little guy hatches, I also try to carefully transfer them to a sprig of milkweed. For the small ones, I always cut a tender growth tip and use that for food. At that stage, one will occasionally disappear and they're easy to lose, drop, or smush, but most of them do fine, and they usually stay on their sprig of milkweed eating tiny little sections of leaf.

Morning all, Just had to post onto this thread. About a week ago the wife calls me while I was on my way home from work. You didnt take my little turtle and rabbit garden statues did you? I says, nope, but she knows that I am not above relocating them and kinda tucking them into someplace outta the way. Well this really irked me badly. We have really worked our butts off this spring to make our place a head turner and to think someone had taken some of our things just made me madder and madder the closer to home I got. WELL, pulled into the driveway and got out a can of paint and made me a couple of signs, and posted them on either side of the flower bed where the little statues were taken from. We went out for dinner and came home about 2 hours or so later and lo and behold, the little statues were tucked into the front door. The next day, a guy came to the house and asked if we had gotten the items he left in the door. Told him yep, said he and his wife had "found" them in the weeds over by the local park. (Made me suspicious, taking a walk in the weeds???) But anyways, told him thanks for bringing our things back. So why not make a little sign up, and put it out in the front yard by the sidewalk. Use the company name, and cite the infractions. When their business starts dropping off, maybe they will get the message that thievery is totally unacceptable. Give it a try, it may just work out for you. Roger South of Chicago

We had a robin build a nest under our deck one year. Same area (near the ceiling) where your robins built their nest! The 2 babies fledged and left in good shape. We took care not to approach or bother them. I would put mealworms out for them away from the nest. The parents would watch for me. Sometimes the father would trot up and look at me while I was watering the flowers. MORE MEALWORMS please! The parents did not return the following year. I think it was because raccoons and groundhogs started coming around for the bird food and worms. I used to store peanuts in a plastic garbage can out on the deck. One night a creature chewed a hole in the lid. I didn't know what kind of animal was doing this so I replaced it with a metal can/metal lid and wrapped a chain over it. The next day the ungrateful beast had urinated all over it! I stopped storing the peanuts (any food) on the deck. I also had to cut back on the number and type of bird feeders because they were climbing on these and knocking the food out. No more mealworms either as raccoons and groundhogs like these as well. We finally had to hire a trapper. The groundhogs were tunneling under our deck and I didn't like how bold the raccoons were becoming. The trapper advised us to seal all the open areas (lattice) around our deck to prevent future invasions. We trapped several raccoons and groundhogs, a skunk and a couple of squirrels and a rabbit. We released the squirrels and rabbit. I would like to mention that the trapper said trapped squirrels can be so desperate to get loose, that they will frequently break their necks trying to get out of these Havahart traps. The ones we had trapped didn't do this because we were checking the traps 3x a day and didn't give them a lot of time to worry themselves to death. Chipmunks were also a problem this year. Our neighbor said he had caught 15 of them this year alone. Did you know that chipmunks can weaken your foundation/sidewalks? Now I know why a section of our front sidewalk dropped.....:( I'm hoping the robins will try again next year.

I'm in the berries. I made a nice job with netting and put boards down so the chipmunks could't get in. It worked! Here is yesterday's harvest!