One month in, and the monarch butterfly situation is not the shitstorm I was expecting.
The first week I dutifully picked off every egg I could find, which made me heartsick but such genocide was surely better than a denuded shrub full of starving half grown caterpillars. I left a few baby caterpillars behind, but by the next week, they had all disappeared. Since then I’ve left them to it, and to my surprise the ecosystem appears to be self regulating.
Although, I have to say, this guy seems to be in a bit of trouble:
