Date: 05/11/2012

Number: 1

Following our releases last month, we had a retrun of a couple of females, who deposited eggs on our reviving milkweed. In the offing, we've had 30 more caterpillars emerge (oh, yeah, 4 more little ones popped up Monday)! Unfortunately, to sustain that "herd" we purchased some additional milkweed at Houston Garden Center, which apparently had been sprayed with some sort of insecticide, because we lost over half of our caterpillars. Amazingly, some nobly managed to survive and struggle in being a chrysalis. We have 13 of them as of last night, and that does appear to be all of those caterpillars. We've promised 4 to the new neighbor's children, and my wife's boss is going to get one also. That, hopefully, willl leave us with 8 to release and we pray they will all emerge as healthy butterflies! We appear to have lost one of the "Final Four" but also pray the remaining three can reach maturity as caterpillars and transform into 3 glorious butterflies later. This is an exciting experience, but it is tragic also when we lose one, and especially 16 like we lost the other day. Life does go on, thank heavens!

Conroe, TX

Latitude: 30.3 Longitude: -95.4

Observed by: Joseph
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