Hooray, he made it!

Out of the recent three monarch caterpillars that developed from eggs on our milkweed, at least one developed in a perfectly formed butterfly.

No matter how carefully I checked every stone, plant, the walls of the nearby shed, and under the roof overhang for chrysalides, the only one I discovered was this one.

He had crawled from the milkweed plant to form his chrysalis on a loosely coiled garden hose.

When we noticed that the chrysalis was getting dark last week Sunday, we decided to lift the part of the garden hose it was on, and draped it over the branch of a potted silver lupine.

There was no way the emerged butterfly could have stretched its wings down to dry.

Here he is, as he was pumping blood into his wings, as they slowly filled and stretched.

A couple of hours later her was gone, off on his adventures.

And this is where I first discovered him, in a nest of garden hoses near the potted milkweed.