r/MonarchButterfly

First buddy started to J hook about 36 hours ago. It was about mid 80 at the time, temps have dropped to 70 during the day and 50 at night since then. Hoping that's just slowing the process. Second buddy had grown very quickly the last couple of days (I'd say an instar a day) then expelled a bunch of green liquid yesterday morning sometime. It was moving around when I got home last night, but is curled weirdly at the bottom this morning. First buddy is hanging from the lid and I don't want to disturb him if he's doing ok. The milkweed is all homegrown and I don't use pesticides, but is in my front yard so I suppose if my neighbors do some could have drifted. Worried the one has NPV and it's going to spread, but also worried if I try to remove it I will kill the j hooking one.

Reposting cuz the last vid I shared had an obnoxious burp sound effect (not me) meant for family.

Just thought I’d share. It’s actually not too hard to do, just gotta be super careful.

Crumpled wings. Could be anything from OE or poor diet as a caterpillar since they can get aggressive competing for food even with lots around.

Not sure what to do yet. It may have OE so I’m keeping it isolated and washing my hands after handling it. I also dispose of everything in contact with bleach. It has a ton of energy but it’ll never fly. I tried to macro photo the scales but didn’t work - can’t see jack. Don’t have a microscope. Just seems very healthy aside from wings.

Some say freeze them to sleep, some say release them and let nature take its course. But it can have OE and part of nature in releasing it includes starving to death. Hard call for me honestly. Let’s not debate but feel free to share your stories.

For now it has a big enclosure with flowers, sun, and nectar water. I work from home so caring for it isn’t a big deal.

We will see.

100% Newbie.

My toddler loves butterflies and I decided to buy two different milkweed plants to see if we'd get any. Today I was inspecting the plants for eggs and saw that there are tiny bugs along with some white things that Google says are aphids. Are they? I don't want to inadvertently remove butterfly eggs if Google is wrong. Can someone, please help me? Thank you!!

Found this fellow emerging half an hour ago and it seems stuck

Finding eggs and teeny caterpillars everywhere in the last few weeks!

Do I help?

My cat has been hanging limp for a couple of hours and I’m not sure if he’s a goner or do I wait and see?

Sorry for the dark picture. My flash isn’t working

One more baby to go and then I'll be a empty nester! Now, if I can just get the human 29yo to go...

How many can you find??

this season started with the first two tachnid fly deaths in my garden (as far as I am aware). so heartbreaking ... and also so joyful to see this beauty made it this far against so many odds. (i was a bit afraid to check but picked the perfect time) 💚

Same HAT but not the same BATCH!
18 more so far over the last 90min, so far 40+ monarchs in 2 days… 😂 30+ more to go! Enjoy!

I was cleaning out my monarch cat enclosure and found this larvae?/maggot? thing on the topsoil of the potted milkweed I have in there. All cats and chrysalises look fine, all eating and developing normal. I have removed and disposed of it, I didn’t want it potentially hurting them. Any ideas of what it could be?

I will also crosspost this to r/whatbugisthis

Does anyone have any ideas what this could be on my milkweed?

Still trips me out every time I happen to catch it. As a kid I never questioned how this happened, just read about it in books.
Wasn’t till my forties when I decided to find out. I figured I’d share just in case anyone else out here was curious. Keep up the good work out there 👊🏽.

Still got another 6-8 today it’s only 8:30am and they are popping up like weeds! 🤣🥳 wonder how many i end up with I believe we had 4-5 dozen chrysallis…. 4 failed yesterday due to some chrysalis underdevelopment so I had to remove and discard as the red ants “clean up crew” was trying to help. Didn’t want them accidentally attacking the healthy babies. Enjoy!