About those little plastic containers that I use to house some of the Caterpillars (I think they are the “critter cages” sold at Petco). Although these containers are great for housing the Caterpillars, they aren’t so great for hatching Chrysalises. The reason is because once the Chrysalis hatches and the Butterfly emerges, it needs something to grab on to in order to let its wings dry out. What has happened twice now with emerging Eastern Black Swallowtails is that they fall to the bottom of the cage and the sides are too slippery to climb back up. Fortunately I was able to save one of them (the picture below), but another one fell and I didn’t notice it for a while. As a result the wings didn’t unfurl and I had no choice but to euthanize. From now on I’m going to try and place paper towels in these cages and hope they can use that to climb back to the top if they happen to fall.
Eastern Black Drying
by texdr
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