Murder Most Fowl!

        On the eve of get-away day, in the midst of much eating and anticipation, a dastardly deed was done. The perpetrator is still unknown, but it has struck before, when the caterpillars were smaller. In today's incident, the caterpillar was found in pieces scattered about, including its hind section left lodged on the leaves it had been innocently munching just moments before. Whodunnit? Bird, wasp, biting beetle? We don't know.  Whatever it is can execute a clean cut ruthlessly. 

          Oblivious to the cruelty of nature, perhaps because over eons it looks to them like precarious balance, the six remaining full grown caterpillars toured and plumped before beginning, tomorrow probably, their journey off the milkweed towards butterflyhood. One, nicknamed Neil Diamond, went all the way down his stalk, paused for two hours, then went back up, flicking his antennae ahead of him, to clip one last leaf for eating. 

      The Three Amigos, played by Chevy, Steve, and Martin, do part for molting and some independent eating, but they always come back together. As readers have seen before up on the milkweed flower, they are strangely inseparable.

        Remember last week's images, when we could barely find them inside the flowers.  Not a problem anymore.  They are as big as the swallowtail. 

          Savor your last meals everyone. Tomorrow the next journey begins. Nature willing, the next meal will be as a butterfly!

          Lot's of other interesting things happened today, which we will return to soon, but tonight's report is all caterpillar. We would like to close by sharing the best sequence we have photographed of a caterpillar shedding its skin, this one showing one of the amigos emerging as a fifth and final instar.