Rough Day

 It's been a rough day at the Monarch Cafe.  We got a taste of what we've been trying to avoid by getting the caterpillars inside as soon as possible.  Apparently a few caterpillars we overlooked were attacked by the tachinid fly (last year we lost close to half this way).  Losing 5 caterpillars as they were preparing to go into the chrysalis was traumatic.

The caterpillar pictured to the left was one of these.  The strings hanging down are how you recognize that the fly larvae have exited the caterpillar.

On a more positive note, we have now released 48 butterflies and have 63 chrysalis with several more caterpillars scoping out the roofs of their habitat.  And of course there's easily 100 more caterpillars still eating.