This little chunky Monarch cat ate all the leaves and overnight chomped about a foot of stem.
Monarch cat
From the other side
Getting it's fat built up for the trip to Mexico!!! This is the last push then they will be gone before we know it.
The 5th instar Monarch cat eats like a maniac! Still, I wish there were some around this year. *sniff! sniff!* I'm trying to reason with myself...the thought actually crossed my mind that I could head toward one of the nurseries to the west and kidnap one or two...if even they have any cats eating their milkweeds! There were a couple of Queens that came by a while back, but no sign of cats from them. What amazes me is the number of little Antelope Horn plants that have come up on my property from all the rain! Cool!
I was noticing that yesterday, too, even in a pretty urban area, they're all along the roads and in any cleared, undeveloped lots. I was seriously pondering getting some of those little survey flags marked "Butterfly habitat Do Not Mow". The plants are so non-descript, there's no reason folks would think they're important, but people do have a great respect for those little flags.
Speaking of eating like a maniac, with all that high-fiber diet, there's a lot of poop, too. I guess usually I see them when there are several on a plant, and they eat it to the ground in a matter of hours, so I never see the end product. However, other weekend I stumbled across this one who had somehow got a whole plant to itself. Look at those droppings! They're bigger than mouse poop! I guess logically they should contain some fabulous nutrient mix to revitalize the plant the larva just devoured?
