Sunday, October 20, 2012,

This is the caterpillar of a Monarch Butterfly that my friend Sue of Four Harbors Audubon Society spotted while we were cleaning up Young’s Island. It’s on a milkweed plant and getting ready to make itself a nice cozy cocoon. These pics look a bit static compared to what was going on. The back end of this guy, which, by the way is the end with the longer prongs, nearer the leaf edge, was twitching and jerking spasmodically. None of us are experts but we figured that this was the start of a new chapter in its life cycle. Or maybe it was dying, who knows? But I was not, for one, was not about to offer any mouth to mouth. Call me conservative, if you must. “I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam.” A little Popeye for you folks.

JK