The Caterpillar Grows

Our caterpillar is nine days old now and is a little over an inch long.
It is very easy to see his stripes, feet, face and antennae. He has five pairs
of thick back legs and three pairs of pointy front legs. The stripes are mostly
black, yellow and white with little traces of pale green in between.



Wednesday, August 7, 1996
The caterpillar has been eating constantly the past few days. He can easily eat a
whole milkweed leaf in one day. But, today he has been just sitting still underneath
a leaf. When we checked on him later in the day we saw shedding his skin. The
skin split just behind his face and he wriggled around until he was all the way out
of his old skin and it was a shriveled heap behind him. The skin covering his face
also fell off and left his face looking very pale green.



After about an hour, the color and stripes came back to his face. Then he turned
around and ate his old skin.



Friday, August 9, 1996
Ever since the caterpillar shed his skin, he has been eating and growing like crazy
We don't think it will be very long until he makes his chrysalis.