My cotton-bud caterpillar emerged from it's chrysalis today and was perfect!
If you remember from my previous post, when it formed its 'J' it must have made an incomplete silken button to hang onto because, after a day of hanging, it fell.
I had done this before, so I got a cotton-bud and teased out some of the cotton end. I removed the cotton tip from the other end and cut that end of the stick to a point (that was to poke it into my block of florists foam).
I somehow wrapped some of the teased out cotton around the end feet of the caterpillar and even saw the feet move to tuck themselves into the cotton too. I hung it up and there it sat.
When it came time to form the chrysalis I fully expected it to fall, but no, the process happened well and eventually there was the chrysalis hanging from the cotton fibres.
It didn't look too robust a connection though (see picture below), so I helped it with a tiny amount of hot-melt-glue. (Please note - if you do this you must be sure not to get any of the strands of glue on the chrysalis because they might prevent the butterfly from coming out of the chrysalis when the time is right.)
The chrysalis sat there for 12 days until last night, when it began to darken and orange wing colours became visible.
This morning at about 9am a perfect female butterfly slid out of the chrysalis and by 11am it was ready to go. At that point I set it outside and away she flew to her butterfly life.
**Click on each picture below for a larger view and to read the story..................