Amazing, fascinating and Incredible. Two weeks ago Juli noticed a monarch butterfly on Tilghman Isle. She caught it. While that is not so amazing , what she did next was. She placed her butterfly cage with the monarch inside, over a milkweed plant growing in our back yard. The butterfly laid eggs on the underside of the milkweed plant's leaves. She then carefully transplanted the milkweed plant into a home made terrarium. The eggs hatched and she fed the tiny and very hungry Caterpillars leaves from that milkweed and then all the remaining milkweed plants she had raised from seedlings. The small striped insects grew at an alarming rate. Here in the photo they are 2 to 3 inches long and about a third of an inch in diameter. They can eat all of these leaves and more in a single day. The caterpillars do nothing but eat.  Last night one of the dozen or so caterpillars spun a chrysalis for itself. Today as I write this another is going into a chrysalis. Juli ran out of  food growing here in our yard. So she and I walked down to the little pond near our house and found several more milkweed plants. These should keep them fed until all the caterpillars have cocooned. We await the day when they emerge as brightly colored Monarch butterflies. It is really wonderful to watch the curiosity bloom in our daughter. She has really creative ideas. Who would have thought to catch a butterfly and raise more from it?