Snips and Snails...

From kind of cute....


To downright scary! This spider I found on bugguide.net listed as an "unusual spider", well maybe we have an unusual backyard because we have spiders like this all the time! It said it is a Spinybacked Orbweaver. One of my neighbors called it a crab spider, but evidently there really are such things as crab spiders and this is not what they look like. She also said their bites hurt a lot, but according to the entomology department at the University of Florida, they are not dangerous. Whew!

These babies are on my milkweed sprouts in the front yard. I did not expect to find caterpillars on them just yet - they have not bloomed, but I guess momma Monarchs know what to look for!


I do have some Pentas planted in front that attract butterflies. The milkweed in pots are all about 4-8 inches tall. I may plant some in front to attract more butterflies there too.

And finally, I have some bad news about our little chrysalis. In an earlier picture, you may have noticed that it has a strange lumpy spot on the back. I don't know what it is or if it is a big deal, but in checking in on it, I started noticing tiny black dots popping up all over the chrysalis. This is not a great picture, but you can see the spots.
The spots are an indication that our butterfly has a parasite called Ophryocystis elektroscirrha, which is so hard to say that almost every butterfly website abbreviates it as O.E. without bothering to say what that stands for. The only hosts for O.E. are monarch and queen butterflies. And I guess this may explain both the first dead chrysalis and the partially molted caterpillar I found. Males usually are really deformed and don't reproduce, but females may be almost normal, except that everywhere they go, they leave O.E. spores behind. Which means an O.E. female visited our milkweed and probably all those 17 caterpillars contracted O.E. This means that even if our butterfly encloses (which means emerges) we cannot let it go.

I don't know if there is anything that can be done about this problem. It said online to use native milkweeds because tropical varieties are more likely to harbor the parasite, but our native variety IS the tropical variety! So I guess we will just continue to enjoy the fat grubby cats as they munch the milkweed and the butterflies that visit our yard. I do not intend to put another monarch in the cage at this time.