So late last fall, sweetie and I found a green and yellow and black stripey caterpillar munching on the dregs of his dying dill plants, popped it along with a couple of sprigs and twigs into a small terrarium, and presto, a day later there was a chrysalis there. We left it on a shelf in the garage over winter. Along about March, I put it out on the back porch; the websites I’d researched said if it survived, it’d emerge by mid-spring or so.
April came and went, cold and wet. Along about mid-May, I figured it had died over winter; I’d seen posts about the detailed care some people took of such things - keeping it in the fridge, making sure the temperature was steadily cold, spritzing it with distilled water once a week - and cringed a bit, was it really necessary to keep it moist? But I left the little plastic pot out there with the lid off, partly 'cause I was too lazy to throw it out right away and partly, you know, just in case.
Today, a lovely morning in the low 60’s, I stepped out onto the porch with a cup of coffee and the morning paper and looked down, and there it was, still floppy and clinging to the edge of the pot, an Eastern Black Swallowtail. Well I’ll be.
Last I saw of it, it was clinging to a branch of the yew I quickly set the pot next to, and looking considerably less soggy. I just checked a moment ago and it’s gone.
You have, once again, proved that hope springs eternal. You left that one, little, outside chance, just in case. Hope wins again. The reward is beauty.
I was privileged enough the other day to see a cinnabar moth. It was so beautiful - never seen one before, and had no idea it was a daytime moth until I googled the crap out of “red and black butterflies”.
Then a few days later I saw another one - and was marveling at its gorgeous coloring, when my cat leaped out of nowhere and ate its wings.
