Oh what a colorFULL place to be! The skies are a lovely blue, and virtually everything on the ground is GREEN! Farmers are on at least their second, if not third cutting of hay, the wheat harvest has begun, and we had a lovely surprise of finding monarch caterpillars this week! After digging around, we found our Butterfly Pavillion that we've been carting across the U.S. for the last two years and it finally has some legit tenants! Three monarch caterpillars decided that a weedy vine in this backyard looked pretty good and after being supplied with copious amounts (fresh 2x a day!), we now have two cocoons, with (hopefully) a third not too far behind! We had spent time at the Monarch Gardens in Pismo Beach two winters ago, and remembered that the only thing that monarch caterpillars are supposed to eat is the milkweed plant. So we're somewhat confused, but delighted with our find!
In only two hours, these little "J"s become fully-cocooned! Pumpkin has been spouting the term "chrysallis" for hours!
Pumpkin also managed to dig up this interesting character from under a board:
Not sure yet what it is. Our field guide doesn't have him listed. A little smaller than the fully-pudged-out monarch caterpillars, he is ALWAYS on the go. All three nomads have stood by the pavilion just to watch him do laps. Pumpkin didn't find him eating anything, so we're not sure what leaves to put in the pavilion and, at the rate he's bustling around, I'm not sure how long he's going to last.
But beyond caterpillars, we have an interesting, albeit rather terrifying (for some) house guest:
She is a fishing spider, approximately 6 inches in diameter. How do we know she is female? Because she doesn't have boxing gloves (swollen pedipalps)! Nice to know that spider sex identification is easy! Anywho, she shed her skin a day after we first found her (about two feet to the right of the back door), and Pumpkin snatched it up before her siblings had a chance to shred it while fighting over it. The level of detail in the shed skin is fantastic! Who would have thought that I'd get to the point that I'd hold a spider skin? Still not to Pumpkin's level though: she enjoys having a certain friend's Rose Hair Tarantula crawl around on her. *shudder*
Ah...bugs!
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