stunt_muppet

Of course I'm not pissed off that I'm not at BotCon right now. Not at all. Not in the slightest. I am in no way being eaten up with jealously at the thought of not getting to meet the writers and artists and voice actors of my favorite continuity and not buying any comics or getting any autographs, fuck you California one day I will just cut you off the side of the country and bring you over here so you can stop hogging everything. >:(

In all seriousness, even if it was close I wouldn't have been able to go anyway, probably, what with my baby brother graduating from high school! A bit scary since I do actually remember him being a baby, but, still, super proud of him, and it does warm the heart to watch him walk across the stage after all the hard work he's done.

Also, if I was at BotCon, I wouldn't have gone to see a documentary about the oldest cave paintings ever found, in Chauvet Cave in France, asking questions about the nature of art and humanity and stuff. You wish you were this much of a film snob, oh yeah. (Though it was very beautiful, and you should see it if you get the chance.)

Oh, and another thing I wouldn't get to do if I was at BotCon: Watch a black swallowtail caterpillar molt. OF COURSE THAT'S EXCITING.





This is the caterpillar that will eventually turn into a black swallowtail butterfly. Now, everyone's familiar with the egg --> caterpillar --> pupa --> butterfly/moth cycle, but the caterpillar (larva) itself also goes through several stages of growth, called instars. As it eats, it grows until it's big enough and has enough mass to make the metamorphosis to a butterfly, shedding its skin along the way.



This little guy is in the first larval instar, meaning he's just hatched; you can tell by the distinctive white stripe across its middle. At this point in its life it mostly defends itself by looking like bird poop.

Now, I looked up the caterpillar after I took its picture to see what it was, and found out that swallowtail caterpillars primarily eat dill, chives, Queen Anne's Lace, and parsley. In this case, specifically the parsley in my mother's herb box. So I got all concerned - after all, this guy was a baby, so he was going to eat a lot more parsley before he was done growing, and I didn't want him to get smushed. So I talked to Mom and offered to put him in a jar with some mesh over the top and feed him store-bought parsley so as to spare Mom's plants. She agreed - until I got the jar from the basement and went out and bought some parsley, after which she seemed to have forgotten about it, asked me why I wanted a bug in the house, and said she was fine with it eating her parsley, as she could always plant more. So now I have a bunch of parsley that I have nothing to do with unless I want to be a complete nerd and hand-feed the caterpillar. Anybody got recipes?

So I've been taking pictured of him as he's grown, and I went out this morning, to find that he was finally moving. I went to get a closer look and found that he wasn't just moving - he was crawling out of his skin!



He literally just wriggled out of it, turned around and ate the skin. Because I guess you've got to get your protein where you can when you're on an all-parsley diet.

So now he's on his second larval instar, growing pretty fast but not eating as much as I thought he would. He also has a little forked scent glad under the skin near his head; it's designed to release a stench if it's threatened. It'll pop out briefly if you poke it; I'll have to try to get a picture of it later when I have someone to do the poking while I hold the camera.




It is probably a tiny bit absurd how excited I am about this caterpillar, but I am so looking forward to watching his development. Or her development, I suppose.


Goodness it's late. To bed with me.