‘What’s that caterpillar?’ you may think after you’ve looked out your window one morning and seen a caterpillar munching on the leaves of the Virginia creeper that covers one side of your house. The caterpillar’s grown too large for most birds to tackle, and is reddish brown, with eyespots down the side, and plump, grasping “feet.” You run to your bookshelf for an identification guide, and discover that it’s the caterpillar of the Achemon sphinx moth, and is soon to pupate.
Later, you walk out into your garden armed with your identification guide, and see a pretty, white, yellow and black striped caterpillar with “antennae” on its head and rump. It’s dining on a milkweed plant, and you learn it’s the caterpillar of the famous Monarch butterfly. Not only that, eating milkweed makes it distasteful to predators!
After a break for lunch, you walk to the woods behind your house and find a black caterpillar, adorned with white and red spots and black spines, enjoying the leaves of a willow. Your identification guide tells you this caterpillar will turn into the Mourning Cloak, a beautiful butterfly with velvety, reddish black wings lined in gold. You’re getting good at this! Soon you’re finding caterpillars everywhere, and you know which beautiful butterflies they will become!The information doesn’t stop now. Keep looking: Raising Butterflies