We’ve done a particularly poor job of supporting the local Lepidoptera population over the past couple of years.
At first it was a relief not to have to supervise the caterpillar hunger games each season, and the swan plants certainly thrived in their absence, but as far as encouraging monarch butterflies, it was definitely a bust. It took us a while to figure out what was going on, because we weren’t doing anything different to previous years. At first we blamed the thriving ant colonies that we could see everywhere, but then I actually saw a big wasp trying to carry off a fat caterpillar last summer and it seemed we’d finally found the culprit. We shouldn’t have been surprised, as they are the villain every time in any insect documentary you’ll ever watch.
A couple of months ago, we saw a tiny wasp harrying a proportionately tiny caterpillar, so it seemed they were being targeted at every stage of childhood. So, shortly after that, we bought a giant piece of netting to cover the bushes with. It’s been a tremendous success. The initial plan was to have the bushes covered until the caterpillars were big enough to look after themselves. We didn’t want them stuck behind netting when they were trying to crawl away to pupate in private.
This plan lasted until a couple of weekends ago, when we saw a wasp stripping the flesh off some poor caterpillar that was trying to transform into a chrysalis, all stuck upside down and vulnerable and suddenly a whole lot thinner than it had originally been. I suppose I should have taken a photo but it was the stuff of nightmares, I can tell you. So, the netting was quickly replaced, and this time also enclosing the adjacent avocado tree which was able to do something useful for the first time in its life by acting as a nursery.
And today we welcomed our newest family member:
I would have seen it hatching, too, if I wasn’t so busy drinking coffee and reading the New York Times. There are at least ten chrysalises I can see nearby so I think we can already say this has been one of our best seasons yet. It quite heartwarming. Plus, Finn tells me none of the wasps we’ve thwarted are native, so there’s no feeling that we’re interfering with the natural order of things. Yay for us! A rare win for Jordans v nature.
