If you build it, they will come (and eat it all up too)

We were sooo excited last week when we found monarch caterpillars on our milkweed. We must have 30 caterpillars that are all supposed to turn into beautiful butterflies. As you might imagine, since we don't have pets of our own, we kind of adopted these guys - noting how big they got and checking up on them after a rainstorm... little did we know that usually the butterflies only lay one or two eggs per milkweed plant (not 10 to 12 per plant like we've got). Tonight when we went to check on them, they had eaten all the leaves off the milkweed - literally - so now all we've got are awkward stems with caterpillars hanging off!!!

Here's one of our three completely bare milkweed stem plants!!

Of coarse - since we've practically named all 30 we're going to run to the nursery tomorrow and bring them two new milkweed plants home for dinner ;)

...and here's the update: by the time I added the new milkweed there were only 10 catterpillars that left that hadn't gone in search of new food... but the ones that stayed were super happy - check out this picture after just a couple minutes the buggers had made a big dent!


With the new plants each guy will have 3 leaves to eat himself... hopefully that will last untill home depot gets a new shippment of milkweed this weekend!! Look how big they're getting!