MONARCH IN WATING

"How does one become a butterfly?" she asked. "You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar." ~ Anonymous

Yesterday I volunteered at the 3rd Annual Butterfly Festival at the Panhandle Butterfly House in Navarre. My station was the second stop in the Life Cycle of a butterfly; namely, the caterpillar. We had three different caterpillars on display--the  black swallowtail, the orange barred sulphur and the Monarch caterpillars, like the two below.

These two Monarch caterpillars are hungrily munching away on a Milkweed plant, their host plant. The job of the caterpillar is to eat and eat and eat. As the caterpillar grows it splits its skin and sheds it about 4 or 5 times. Food eaten at this time is stored and used later as an adult. Caterpillars can grow 100 times their size during this stage. For example, a monarch butterfly egg is the size of a pinhead and the caterpillar that hatches from this tiny egg isn't much bigger. But it will grow up to 2 inches long in several weeks.

Monarch egg on leaf

Newly hatched caterpillar

Looking for more food. Soon this caterpillar will be ready for the next stage of its life--the chrysalis stage. Then it will emerge from the chrysalis as a lovely Monarch Butterfly.

Monarch Chrysalis

The last three pictures are not mine, but were included from reference sources for visual clarity.