Help! cats on my single milkweed plant

Mellielong, I tried your idea of the yogart and similar cups used at the museum, and I love it. See two below that I devised. The milkweed in the pic is about two days old, and still very fresh. Of course, I have a bf cage in which to transfer my cups when the cats get old enough to produce serious frass. lol. Lori, you would need to rig up or purchase some sort of cage to later grow the cats in. But the yogart cup sure is good temporary housing.

It appears that everyone on this thread is safe from the eye of Gustav, but we do have a lot of Mid-South forum gardeners that are directly in the path as predicted this hour. I pray for their safety.

Lori, I do hope your cats simply traveled away as Sheila proposed.

Martha, I'm glad the yogurt cups are working out. We have lots of glass aquariums we use at the museum and it's so easy to just change out the cups. Of course, I had one today that had built his sling to the side of one, so he had to be carefully moved. But usually, they just munch away.

I did see a huge wasp hanging around the plant.

Okay, just checked the plant. All big cats are gone but little tiny cat is there. Will set up a petcage and milkweed cuttings for him.

I have floral foam
One cutting at a time.

I rescued one tiny guy and one guy that is probably about 4 days older.

Took 2 small soda bottles and cut them off, pressed over my floral foam (I bet that you could cut sponge "collars to do the same thing, and have them safely ensconced in a closed petquarium (about 3 gal size.

Each has his own little 'tree'

I cut and plunged the cut end in the wet foam all at once so cut MW should get water flow okay.

Clear soda bottle will allow me to see the water level below the foam.

I presume that they do not swim, so am avoiding standing water over the foam.

Pix in a minute

Lori, the floral foam didn't work for me. My milkweed wilted and died. Perhaps it is that I did not plunge the cuttings into water immediately. I did not know to do that at the time.

Okay, students of entomology: A while ago I found this cat on my parsley. At first I thought it was another BST, until I brought it inside and examined it closely. Looks as if I have an inchworm or looper, but I don't know what kind. Anyone?

I don't think I'll keep it. My hotel is getting full and rooms are reserved for special guests only!

Martha

Lori, our posts crossed. Looks as if you have improvised great little houses for your cats.

Martha

here is the setup

here is Cat A- the little one

here another is Cat A- the little one with a ruler (finally found one so that I could give the penny a rest)

here is Cat B- he is a lot larger

here is Cat B- again, with the ruler

Hope that these guys do better than my others - anyone know what kind of huge reddish wasp lives in SC?

Here you can see the foam - I pushed the stem all the way through it, we will see how that goes.

Love your fishy too pyro!

Looks good on both of setups Martha and Pyro. Don't discard the MW stems when they eat the leaves, give it a fresh nip on the bottom and put it in water. It will root (takes about a week or 10 days) and you will have another plant.

I don't have Monarchs yet that I have seen and so I nipped off the tops of about 10 stalks and cut the bottom leaves off and clipped the blooms, put them in water to root. It makes my plant bushier and I get plants to share or plant.

This message was edited Aug 31, 2008 4:01 PM

Lori, there are some red wasps within the attached pic I scanned into my computer from an insect guide. They are paper wasps that live all over North America. They mostly prey on caterpillars and other insects.

Then there are the Ichneumon wasps (not pictured), some of which are reddish. The females lay a single egg on a cat's thorax and their larvae then burrow in and feed on the cat.

Thanks for the pics. You have a great setup. I continue to learn as I see new ways to rear our sweet cats.

Martha

Sheila, you have ingenious ideas. Keep 'em coming!

Martha

Just stuff that you learn by sticking around Daves! LOL!

Polistes carolinus looks like the culprit- he is huge and he must be carrying my poor cats away.
He is easily 2 inches long, bigger than the cats and bigger than a normal paper or mud wasp.

My fishy is from ebay- he is made in Mexico and I just love him! I also have af rog from the same lady. Very cute and brilliantly painted in bright bright colors.

Got playing around with an empty water bottle and a sponge
2 forms-
Open at the top:
Cut top off and trim down bottom to about 3 inches high. Save the top for other form
Cut the sponge circle slightly bigger than the opening and fold in half, make a straight cut in the middle, then fold in half the other way and do the same - it makes an "X" in the middle that you can poke the stem through.

Fill with water and poke plant in.

Closed top: put circle of sponge in the top, bend the edge of the lower piece and slip the top over it.

another view

Closed top:
put circle of sponge in the top, bend the edge of the lower piece and slip the top over it.

Add the cutting

another view

with milkweed

Found a really nice website

http://www.monarchbutterflyusa.com/MBUSA.htm

What an adorable (and educational) site! Clever, clever, Sandi. I love your milkweed bottle.

You know, we have had a lot of wasps this year. Wasps of all kinds. I have seen that red wasp in my yard too.

An alert came out for my area and surrounding counties. Tropical storm warning starting tomorrow morning throughout the day, and possibly into Tuesday. Yikes. I thought it was going to miss me.

Martha

I'm new to this but I've been reading about the size of your plants. I bought some wonderful asclepias from Gardens Crossings website. The plants grow to about 5 feet tall and 3 feet wide. Needless to say there are plenty of leaves on even one plant. I had one of the smaller variety but I've attracted so many more monarchs with these huge perennials. They get very pretty pink flowers that the butterflies love. I've also just ordered a larger yellow variety from Lazy s Farm in VA.

OMG!
I just watched my cat change into a chrysalis!
He was very quiet yesterday and kept migrating up to the top of the cage - I thought that he was not old enough for that and kept putting him back on his 'tree'.
But the little guy is precocious (and I am a dummy).
Last night he was "j"'d in the top and it was clear that he was going to pupate.

I went out this AM expecting him to be done, but he was not- all of a sudden while I was watching he started writhing and pulsating and his skin popped open and out he came!
I got to watch the whole thing and it was amazing!

I could not even leave to get my camera, so I got a picture of him at the end.

Yay!!!!!

Isn't it the coolest thing to watch?? God does such an awesome job! And just to think in 10 days it will be a beautiful butterfly, completely changed and ready for a whole new experience!!

I try not to touch or move them....they do know what they are doing. If they are hungry, they will find the food.
Congrats!!! Nice pictures too pryo!

this is just too great. Yesterday was just such a sucky day and this has brightened me so much.
YAy!!

Okay, and I think that I have solved the mystery of what happened to my other cats.

This one that just went into a chrysalis (I have named him Bob), was (yesterday) the same size as the ones that went missing. Which is why each time that Bob got off his tree yesterday I peeled him (gently) off of the roof of the petquarium and put him back on his tree. After he did that even though I put new leaves in for him I wisely said, "okay, Bob, I get ya!" and left him alone.

You see, I may have been wayyyy off in the number of days that they were caterpillars. Being new and a dummy I thought that they were not nearly as old as they were.

So now I think that perhaps they were NOT carried off (at least all of them - there were about 10) but instead wandered off to pupate. They were all about the same size and they all disappeared at the same time - now that would have been one BUSY wasp (and I only ever saw one of those at a time) to take them all.

I now think that my time line was off, and I did not know (having never seen one) how big the cats were when they reached full-sized (my husband said that they should have been much bigger, as he saw them all the time when he was a boy in Utah). I think his memory is faulty or perhaps the Utah ones get bigger than my SC ones. ??

Many questions, few answers.

So the day that they disappeared was Sunday the 31st. If they pupated they should be emerging around the 10th.

Gonna be really careful when moving my plants around because they may be hiding there.

my other one (whose name is now Fred) is eating and growing.

I took a very young monarch cat to work, so we all could watch the transformation. She eclosed on Wed, and we watched - I just happened to go back to my desk to get something and noticed, and yelled for everyone to come over. Later we released her, and it was cute to see a bunch of grown women cheer when she flew away. It is a wonder to watch.

Congratulations Lori and debuli. Debuli, your butterfly has a very long way to travel to Mexico! I know that unbelievable moment that is so mesmerizing you can't move to get your camera.

Horace, my Black Swallowtail is still in his chrysalis (he may be she). Two of my Monarch babies didn't make it. I still have two left in my cage and they are healthy and growing. I think I will name them Ho and Hum -- easy to say and easy to remember.

Checked my garden this afternoon in the aftermath of the rain, wind, and storm. The plants did the best they could. Many broke off with fallen limbs on them. My canna did survive. I found a Monarch cat on a big canna leaf. It must have wondered from the nearby Milkweed. Checking a moment ago, it is back on the milkweed chomping away.

Martha

They usually know before we do that the weather is changing and will get underneath a leaf or limb and wait it out.

Pyromomma....You might look in weird places. Garden art, chairs, fence, building and etc. They don't always use plants when they go to pupate.

I'll have to make a copy of it, but at the museum there is a picture up on our bulletin board of a Monarch chrysalis hanging on the ear of a statue. It looks just like the statue is wearing an earring! It's funny how it picked the exact place an earring would be!

Melanie

You might try to burn the end of the milkweed, it seals the sap, then put it in water. I know that is how you handle poppies to put in a vase. Who knows it may work, let me know if it does.

There is a barely visable with the naked eye wasp called a trycogramma (sp?) that will use the cats as a host for feeding. They could be the cause of cat death. They work great for web worms, just break open the webs. I have released some in my garden because we had three generations of web worms last year and I also have pecan borers.

Had two of these visitors today, they finally found the milkweed although the pic shows it on a Buddhleia. Yeah!

Good luck!

Sounds cute Melanie! This one I have posted somewhere before, but here goes again. One chrysalis toward the front was about a week before the other. Strange that they made it to the same statue and same area.

Sheila, the chrysalises will be well protected beneath the rim of the hat. Great pic.

Melanie, would love to see a pic of your earringed statue!

Gosh, Peg, I hope your Tricogramma don't infest your Monarch cats. Pretty pic, BTW.

It is always a pause for me to wonder how in the world a Monarch, newly pupated, knows how to find its winter home in Mexico. Guess it's somehow built in their DNA.

Martha

I'm amazed at the whole life cycle of the Monarch, and how 1 out of 4-5 (I really don't know how many) generations know they are the ones to hibernate over the winter.