Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: My new Adopted Gulf Fritillary Cats, 1 by UniQueTreasures

UniQueTreasures wrote:
I'm a new Grandmother.... of my adopted Gulf Fritillary Butterfly.

I had something exciting happen this morning. Hubby was emptying out his van of hunting stuff and found a small hairy caterpillar. I took him out to the "cat house". Didn't look like anything was happenening with any of the chrysallises yet. I did notice two new chrysallises outside of the cage. I started looking and the cedar has shrunk a bit there at the opening of the cage. I could see "daylight" enough that a cat or two could have gotten out.... or something, like a wasp or a lizard, could have gotten inside. We'll have to fix that, and soon.

A little while later, I was out taking some photos of my herbs and saw something moving in the cage out of the corner of my eye. I was worried because as I was walking around the yard, I saw a wasp. I walked over to the cat house and saw one of the Gulf Fritillary chrysallises on the little plastic cage within the cat house. There beside it was this folded up gorgeous color of orange. The butterfly was emerging. I had the camera in my hands and tried to get some photos. My heart was racing and fluttering bigtime. I hollered for Hubby to come see. He didn't hear me. I reached in to touch it and the wet butterfly crawled onto my finger and began crawling up my arm. Alsmot as though he knew I was his new "mom". So I closed the cage, with the butterfly crawling up my shoulder. I went around to the front with the camera and wanted Hubby to get some photos. Instead, he held out his hand and the buterfly walked on to his finger. I snapped a few more photos. Then told him to take some with me holding it. The colors of the butterfly were so beautiful!

I think this is amazing because the chrysallis was so plain jane compared to the Monarch's chrysallis. You can see the chrysallis beside the wet butterfly in that first photo, top left.