Date: 09/21/2016

Number: 1

We saw adult mama monarch laying multiple eggs on our one Mexican Milkweed plant that I planted in our apartment garden :). Many eggs hatched and many caterpillars emerged, but sadly most were apparently eaten by little orange assasin bugs (which i began squashing once I realized what was going on!), & one mama wasp who was constantly hiding in the milkweed waiting for caterpillars to emerge. We rescued three only 1/2 inch brand new caterpillars. My son took them to his school for a live Teddy Roosevelt Museum display day (Teddy was a big naturalist!) and then continued to raise them inside. They have all 3 gone into chrysallis in last day. We also rescued the 6 remaining large - possibly 5th instar - caterpillars on the milkweed bush before painters started painting the wall by the milkweed. Just in time! Now we have at least one of those also in a J hook, and the rest have almost certainly disapeared and chrysallised or J-hooked somewhere in my kitchen while I was away and my hub was "babysitting" our 9 caterpillars!! aaagh! That's the only monarch we've seen so far. But there were at least 25 little caterpillar munching holes in the milkweed leaves were it appears more eggs and larva emerged that just got eaten. So maybe more than one monarch layed eggs, but I'm the only milkweed plant around that I've seen for quite awhile- so our plant is a hot commodity! Katy Prairie Conservancy is hoping to help us start planting native milkweed (which looks much more like northern milkweed) so that monarchs won't land here and lay eggs in the fall/winter and stay around too late before it's too hard to make it to Mexico.

Houston, TX

Latitude: 29.8 Longitude: -95.7

Observed by: Shanyn
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