Monarchs!

We have exciting news! After two years of not finding any monarch eggs, we are happy to report that on July 5th we found some! We found 6 for sure, and 3 others that were maybe eggs. We set them up in the kids bathrooms so we could watch - Here's what it looked like a week ago - 

On Saturday they all hatched! There were 6 that came out, but one of them died after he came out... he ate enough for him to be visible, and then he just didn't move or eat and slowly shrived up and disappeared. But we've got 5 thriving caterpillars right now. They are so amazing. On Sunday they were about the size of a fingernail clipping - 

And today they are all as big as a grain of rice. Mel's fingers holding a dry grain of rice for reference. 

I'm guessing they'll be as big as an orzo pasta by tomorrow night. 

It's pretty fun to watch. I moved them from the bathroom to the kitchen, and I also moved them off of their individual leaves and they are all on one plant together and they seem to be getting along with each other. So our monarch history - in 2018 we had two (I'm excited for Daniel to be able to maybe share his butterfly friends at the bus stop like Natalie did that year!) and we had two in 2019, then didn't have any in 2020 or 2021, so this is very exciting to already have 5 caterpillars, and in July! I never even used to find any until the end of July or August, so this is very promising. A few tips and tricks to finding monarch eggs - 

1) Locate milkweed plants (use google if you don't know what they look like. I can spot them in a yard or on the side of the road when I drive by. In Sandy on 13th East at about 12000 South, you can see milkweed on the east side of the road there. 

2) Look on the underneath side of the top few leaves of the plant for eggs. Monarchs lay on the underneath side of the leaves, and also usually lay on the smaller sized more tender leaves near the top of the milkweed (not the tiny leaves at the very top, although sometimes they lay there too, but usually not on big tough leaves more at the bottom of the plant)

3) If you find an egg, just tear off the leaf from the stem. 

4) Carefully collect the leaves on a plate or in your hands

5) Rinse off the end of the leaf where you tore it to rinse off the milkweek which might have already dried up. You want to make sure the leaf can get water.

6) I will mark the leaf with an arrow pointing to where the egg is (see pic 1 in this post)

7) Get a small bowl with water and rest the leaf stem in the water (see pic 1)

8) I usually will hold the leaf in place with a small or large clothes pin (see pic 1)

And yeah, that's how I get started! And then you just watch. The egg will turn dark when it's about to hatch, and then they come out and they'll eat that leaf for a few days. Then you can carefully move them onto a larger plant. With the 5 we have, I'll have to give them each their own plant once they are bigger and eating a lot. It will be fun! I hope we get 20+ caterpillars like we did in 2017!!