Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: DAILY BUTTERFLIES Page 37, 1 by mellielong

mellielong wrote:
Now, I only have so many critter keepers so right now some folks are sharing. I have three Zebra ST chrysalids that have been with me since April or so. I thought they might be goners but Kristen, my boss at MOSI, told me she'd had a Tiger ST come out after 11 months! I left them on the side and put my Polydamas cats in the cage. Since then, I've seen two of the chrysalids move when a Polydamas cat crawled over them.

So the Polys are getting bigger and the Zebras still won't come out. But I've noticed that the Polys won't leave them alone! My gut purger from this morning has been wandering all day and I keep peeling him off the ZST chrysalis. He just curls around it like he can build on top of it. "You're not a two-story house!" You can see in my picture that everyone decided they wanted to molt next to the chrysalids today. Personally, I think the Polys are too lazy to lay down their own silk and so they're reusing the silk that was laid down by the ZSTs. FYI, the guy in the bottom of the picture is in his sling and ready to be a chrysalis soon!

Melanie