By Wendy
July 19, 1997
July 19, 1997 I am only making a small entry today to document what I have observed. Two more Monarchs hatched from their chrysalis' today. I had happened to stop and look at what they were doing. Two of the chrysalides looked black in color! At first I was startled and wondered what was going on. When I looked at them closer, I realized that they weren't black; but they were actually clear. The black that I was seeing was the butterfly. I should ahve realized and remembered this from our experiences with the Painted Ladies. A chrysalis, when it gets close to the time where it is going to hatch, starts to become transparent. It wasn't as noticeable with the Painted Ladies because their chrysalides were a light goldish-brown to start with. The Painted Ladies also had many of the other colors. The Monarch, on the other hand, had such a bright green chrysalis, and the butterfly is also a darker color. So of course when it came time for it to hatch, the chrysalis looked black because of the butterfly inside. ***It should be noted that once the butterflies have hatched we do begin to feed them fresh sugar water daily. We don't want you to think that we have neglected or forgotten about their food:)