Date: 09/11/2016

Number: 1

No caterpillars. All the milkweed leaves had been eaten except the lone struggling A. incarnata in the rain garden. On the 9th, I had 35-ish caterpillars of different sizes in the front, mostly on my one A curassavica. They ate all the leaves and small stems on this plant and left the larger stems. Then they roamed around and got onto other milkweeds and onto other non-milkweeds. I relocated some to milkweeds that hadn't been eaten much or at all (there were no caterpillars on the incarnata in the back near the tiny pond all season) or had one or 2 caterpillars on them already.

Unfortunately I had to leave town for the weekend. I cut up a pesticide-free butternut squash I had growing and left some chunks near the areas in case they needed emergency food. By Sun, when I returned, all the leaves were gone from all the milkweeds and every caterpillar was missing in both the front and back yards. They left all the larger stems, but I'd read they eat the stems down to the ground, which was one reason I wasn't too concerned about them when I left, although I was worried as they were off the milkweed and wandering about the garden, even the smaller ones. The squash was eaten, but not all of it. Some of them may have been ready to cocoon, but some were smaller.
No caterpillars, and I do not know what happened to all of them.

Fairfield, PA

Latitude: 39.8 Longitude: -77.4

Observed by: Cathleen
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