Caterpillar Rescue

NOTE:  To those of you who don't know me personally, I've never grown up.  I stayed in "the bug phase" that started at age 5.  So, yes, I still raise caterpillars and totally love it.  They are one example of God's fine creation.

Yesterday when it was a rare late fall 80 degrees outside, I found a half grown pipevine swallowtail caterpillar on....the pipevine!  (In IL they eat only pipevine and Aristolochia serpenteria.)  Even after several frosts over the past several weeks, there remains one optimist (or fool) eating pipevine as if winter doesn't exist.  I'd hoped to rescue him yesterday, but could not find him in the dusk as the cold front roared in before the rain.  Today, however, I found him at our peak temperature of around 50ish.  Yes, he was a bit on the cold side, being a cold-blooded beastie.  So I brought him in, breathed hot germy Hall's cherry cough drop-breath on him, and got him set up in a gallon glass jar with some foodplant.  Hopefully he will mature and pupate and overwinter.  At least he has stopped crawling all over the jar and may be settling down to eat.  So far he's produced one piece of frass, always a good sign.

This species is my favorite species of swallowtail butterfly, because of its beauty and because of who introduced it to me:  my nature mentor Stella from southeastern IL.  She was an amazing lady, who got her BS in Botany in the 1920s, and taught nature to people of all ages thereafter.  Stella gave me my first pipevine start, and I've been growing it over 20 years.  My profile photo shows a pipevine swallowtail nectaring on the native cupplant in honor of Stella.

A couple days ago a flutter caught my eye in the back yard:  a freshly-emerged male pipevine swallowtail.  Its wings were so fresh they looked like velvet.  I gently caught him and tried to steer him towards the only nectar plants left, asters in the front yard.  He kept getting away and I didn't want him to use what little energy he had on that cool day in struggling, so I reluctantly released him.  They do not overwinter as butterflies, but instead as chrysalids.  So this butterfly was, in my viewpoint, a little gift from the Lord, since it will perish soon.  It epitomizes the brevity of life, but also the potential for beauty.