Date: 03/16/2020

Number: 117

On March 16, 2020, at La Mirada High School in La Mirada California, only teachers were present and none of the students were present as our district was in the process of closing down for some weeks due to COVID-19 distancing guidelines. Only staff members were present for planning their online teaching. Two teachers observed that there were many monarch caterpillars on the milkweed plants at our school. The leaves on the few milkweed plants were almost gone having been eaten up by the caterpillars. The teachers were concerned that the caterpillars would starve if we did not relocate them to to a feeding spot They asked me if I could help. My backyard in Fullerton, California which is about five miles from La Mirada High School has a lot of milkweed bushes since for the past few years, I have created a snacking space for the monarch butterflies. We collected 117 caterpillars of varying sizes in a big butterfly net and I brought them to my backyard in Fullerton. I placed the caterpillars in batches of ten on the milkweed bushes in my garden. I left 17 in the big butterfly net and fed them milkweed leaves till they turned into the chrysalis stage. from the butterflyI net, i released two monarch butterflies on April the 16th, four on the 17th and two more today on the 18th. There are a couple more in the butterfly net that are almost ready to be released tomorrow. I have lots of photos and videos and am planning to post them as well. A few years back I reported my sightings with photos but have forgotten my password. So I registered again as I was unable to retrieve the password.

Fullerton, CA

Latitude: 33.9 Longitude: -117.9

Observed by: Ruhan
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