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| | Rudy's Last StandIn an attempt to teach my son some things about the wonders of nature, I went out in my front yard and collected a little red and black caterpillar. These little guys are all over the place, and they love to eat a particular type of weed in our yard. Due to the fact that this started out as an introduction to nature for my son, and a very informal one at that, I didn't think to take any pictures of the young caterpillar.
He (though I have no idea if caterpillars even have genders, I began to think of him as "Rudy") was about an inch long when I captured him, and he spent a few days living in a glass jar with a water-soaked cotton ball and as many of his favorite weeds as I could find around the yard. (Hubby's weed-whacking adventures made my searches more challenging.) Rudy ate an amazing amount of leaves, grew at an incredible rate, and pooped like you wouldn't believe. Happily, I only had to clean out the jar once before he arrived at the stage of change. It was at this point that it occurred to me that taking some pictures might be the thing to do.
 After the first jar-cleaning, I collected a little stick and added it to his little apartment. On Monday (September 10), I found that he had climbed that stick and, although he had not attached himself to it yet, he seemed to be getting ready to do just that. I carefully took the stick out of the jar and stuck the bottom end into a big thick piece of styrofoam so I could take some pictures without the reflected light from the glass jar. I put some silk flowers behind him and had snapped a few (poorly lighted and inadequately lensed) shots, when Rudy unexpectedly woke from his nap. After I shot this picture, he did a u-turn on the stick and headed downward to inspect the flowers. I put Rudy and his stick back in his jar and went out to collect some more leaves.
As it turned out, he was close to the change. (Perhaps my set dressing and photo taking disturbed his process.) He ate very little of the leaves I found for him, and later that afternoon, I found him tethered to his stick with two tiny "ropes" of silk on either side of his body. (See the thin white line near the top of his body?) Now, I knew for sure he was where he was going to stay for the next couple of weeks. I took the stick out again, and this time, I set up a more effective lighting system and set my DSLR up with a more appropriate lens for macro shots. I also printed out a photograph I had taken some years back in Yosemite and taped it to the styrofoam so that my pictures would look more natural.
 The picture you see to your right is a good representation of how Rudy looked for the rest of Monday night. I stayed up until four in the morning because I wanted so much to see the process of his change from caterpillar to chrysalis. As I've mentioned, we have lots of these little guys all over our house, and many of them use our porch supports as docking spaces to do their thing, but in the six years we've lived here, I've never seen how they get from caterpillar to chrysalis. I really had no idea what to look for in regards to his changing.
Would he secrete some sort of substance that would later harden into
the skin of the chrysalis? Would his current skin simply change?
Because of my ignorance on the matter, I kept my eyes peeled for any
change at all. As it happened, though, I could not stay up past four in the morning, and Rudy showed no discernable signs of change. (I have about fifty picture just like this one to try and catch any progression over time. To my eye, there was none.)
 I woke up Tuesday morning and immediately checked on Rudy. He looked slightly different - maybe a little less red - in the morning light, but I couldn't be sure. I tried to compare pictures, but since they were still all in my camera, that was difficult. Seeing the higher resolution shots now, I can see clear changes, though. Can you? (To see these pictures in much more detail, just click on them.)
I went and got a bite for breakfast; was only away for about a half hour, maybe forty-five minutes. When I got back to my set-up, my heart sank. The picture on the right is what I found. (I almost didn't even take that picture, so sure was I that Rudy had died.) I put my face right up to him, looking for any indication that he still lived. I thought I saw movement, but it turned out to be his lifeless antennae blowing in the breeze of my breath. I hoped that this was just part of the change to chrysalis, but having never even seen pictures of the process, I just didn't know. And none of my imagined scenarios looked like this!
So, I decided to wait. Of course, by this time, my five-year-old son had completely lost interest in the whole project. I was, for the most part, on my own. I did have some moral support from my dear husband, but at this point, neither of us were certain this was going to turn out well. Still, I kept my camera and lights set up, and parked myself in front of the little guy for the long haul. If this was the change, I wasn't going to miss it this time.
(To Be Continued)
| | | Posted 9/18/2007 7:19 PM - 0 comments
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