Are there any volunteers to help care for the caterpillar over the next week and a half? I will be traveling and I know I cannot refresh the cage with milkweed every day or so.
Wednesday July 31st Is the Last Day to Volunteer
Read on if you are interested. Thanks in advance for your consideration. If we don’t have volunteers very soon, I will release the caterpillar Wednesday night so she can get all the milkweed she needs in the wild of CV. This means we will lost the opportunity to observe the transformation and tag and release the Monarch butterfly in mid to late August. To volunteer, post a comment or email cvearthlab@gmail.com.
You Can Help Care For Caterpillar Outside, Or Bring Her Into Your Apartment
The caterpillar habitat is outside, but if one person wants to commit to caring for this caterpillar until she goes into pupa (cocoon-like stage) over the next week or so, that person could care for the caterpillar indoors. (Caterpillar shouldn’t be kept in super cold air conditioned room)
Care Is Easy But Must Be Done Daily
Care tasks include cleaning the cage everyday or so, which means replacing day old milkweed with fresh leaves (these are available inside and outside the play area), cleaning out the caterpillar poop and generally monitoring the caterpillars growth until she goes into crysalis/pupa/cocoon. This will likely happen around August 6-9th.
Daily Care Tasks Will Only Be Needed Until About August 6th or 7th
Once she’s in pupa stage, she doesn’t need to be monitored as closely until about 1.5 to 2 weeks have passed.
Butterfly Will Be Tagged and Released Around The Week of August 19th
After she emerges as a butterfly, she will need to be released within a day or two. By that time, around August 21-23, Benji and I will be back and can take over.
Benji and I got the tags from Monarch Watch and plan to tag her before releasing her as part of their citizen science project; Benji will likely document the process for an extra credit science project. Thanks! -Denise
More information is here: https://cvearthlab.com/2019/07/28/welcome-monarch-caterpillar-2/
https://cvearthlab.com/2019/07/14/day-10-of-monarch-chrysalis-butterfly-will-emerge-within-days/
Concord Village EarthLab 
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