Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: Bake Monarch, then release, 0 by blossom_bum

blossom_bum wrote:
I live in northern Michigan and we are having a very cool "summer", ie. when I got off work at 7:30 AM the temp was 50F, that's 1 degree above the 40's! I had kept a monarch in the enclosure last night as it was getting too late to let him out, especially in the cool 50's. At noon today I pulled several chrysalis out of the enclosure and set them directly in the sun while I cleaned. Within 2 minutes of the sun and heat hitting them, they were "born". Whoa. All this time I've kept the cages on a covered porch, to keep them out of the rain. So today, everybody got dragged out into the sun, cats and chrysalis. The ones that hatched today were 15-16 days in the chrysalis stage. So for those of you in cool temps, if possible, get those little guys some sun when you see it.

8 healthy monarch butterflies so far, 61 to go. If it weren't for this forum, I wouldn't have known how to rescue these delightful creatures. I planted a butterfly garden several years ago and wondered why I never saw 1 monarch make it from cat to butterfly. So thank you to one and all for your love of nature and your contributions to this forum.