For those of you (like me) who prefer observation to Wikipedia, I offer the following: It takes a monarch caterpillar less than 12 hours to go from “hanging with your ass glued to a leaf” to “green chrysalis”. As expected, the gold beads develop a day or two later.
Other observations: I found 3 “rice sized” caterpillars (and left them out there) and have since found no evidence they ever existed; even though I checked the very same milkweeds. They don’t have a car and they taste bad to eat, so where are they? I have seen no large caterpillars and no chrysalises anywhere I’ve looked. However, monarch butterflies are rather common. I’m thinking it might be harder to find one of these buggers than I’d thought. I assumed there’d be many on any suitable milkweed resource. Evidence suggests the contrary. Maybe I wasn’t quite the complete dumbass as a kid that I ‘d assumed?
Also caterpillars give zero fucks about the world around them; making them cooler than most humans. Forgive the crappy cell phone image:
