City On a Hill Academy

• Aug. 31, 2006 - Fortenths the Monarch

The day after we arrrived home from our month-long road trip (More about that another day), I was catching up on my email, when I looked out the window. Fluttering around our milkweed was a monarch butterfly. I noticed that it would land briefly, and than take off, land briefly again, and take off. Having my suspicions, I gathered the children, and we went outside to observe. My suspicions were correct, and it was a female monarch, laying her eggs on my patch of milkweed! (Hurrah! And to think, that after 7 years of no monarchs, I had contemplated mowing the patch down...Boy! Am I glad that we didn't!) We watched carefully, to see what the eggs looked like, and where they were laid. Then we collected a few leaves. Over the past 3+ weeks we have been observing the one egg  that hatched. Introducing Fortenths the Caterpillar Baby Fortenths Growing Fortenths He's big enough to hold! and he likes to hang on! On Wednesday he was in "J" formation before we went to the beach And here's a close-up~ Sorry that the color isn't better... You'll have to wait to see what we found when we got home... my dialup has done all the uploading it can tonight! (SLOOOOWWWW!!!) Oh, and I'm still figuring out how the sizing thing works.... sorry that the pics are so oddly sized... at least they show up on the page now. :)(They were HUGE before!)

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