Our First Monarch…

For Christmas this last year, I bought all the kids ranger bug catching nets. We had several of the dollar store cheapies, but they just don’t fare well after so many uses. My kids are utterly obsessed with nature, so I knew they would get good use. They are pretty huge, but they are sturdy. I crack myself up watching them run around with these things. About a month after we had them, we went across the street from our house to an open field. Jacks wanted to try catching butterflies. He was running every which way and I was too busy laughing hysterically at his attempts to be of much help. Finally, after about an 30 minutes of this, he hit pay dirt and caught a Monarch. We brought her back over to our house and released her near some milkweed I had just planted. We were a little bummed that she immediately flew away. Then, within 20 minutes or so, she was back fluttering all around the milkweed. It wasn’t until after a few minutes, we realized she was laying eggs. She must have laid 30 or so eggs. We sat glued to our front door watching the whole process unfold.
Several days went by and nothing. Then out of nowhere, there were the tiniest of caterpillars. We had about 15. Within days, they transformed into the chubbiest caterpillars. They easily stripped clean the two milkweeds we had, so we bought more.  All, but one of the caterpillars left or died. We waited and waited for a chrysalis.
We woke up one morning to find a chrysalis hanging from a leaf. It was the most perfect shade of green. Then we waited and waited some more for the big finale, only to have some punk bird, jack our chrysalis. We were so close!  We bought more milkweed and soon the word got out that our house had the hook up. The Monarchs were there everyday laying eggs. We started the whole shabang over again and finally, just the other day our first Monarch emerged from her chrysalis. I see why these are considered the king of all butterflies. She was majestic! She hung around for about 20 minutes for a quick photo op, she fluttered a bit, and finally she took off on her first flight. The kids were so tickled! I feel so accomplished!