July 8, 2021

by drplasticpicker

Yesterday I had two baby monarch catepillars that my mother-in-law mistakenly thought were pests. I came home after clinic and she said there was a slug eating up all the little plants I had asked her to grow from seeds I brought home. She had painstakenly grown those plants, and they were native milkweed from Nurse Lan’s garden. He had given me seeds. And we had just 6 little plants that were not more than 2 inches tall. Two catepillars had eaten them all up. My mother-in-law brought them for me to see, and they were floating in water. They were monarch catepillars and those milkweed plants were meant for them.

My mother-in-law did not know, and I knew how hard she had worked to grow these seeds I had brought home. We started the seeds late this season, and there are not enough for two hungry monarch catepillars. I read on the internet that sometimes zuchinnis or pumpkin or some kind of squashes will do, but to be careful of the pesticides even in “organic” squash. We had a small pumpkin, the first of the summer squash crop that is organic and grown from our own yard. So I did what the internet said, and placed them in a chopstick for the catepillars and also threw in a few of the remaining milkweed leaves. I’ll bring them into clinic if they are still alive today, and see if Nurse Lan can’t give them a home in his garden.

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