Category Archives: Pets & critters

WildLife Wednesday – Caterpillar Condo

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Yesterday evening I was de-beetling my roses when I found a swallowtail butterfly caterpillar on my yellow hybrid tea rose.
The caterpillar was charming on there. I considered leaving it there, but I need to treat my rose for a problem and I couldn’t leave the caterpillar there during the treatment. So, I moved it to one of my fennel plants in my small gnome-flowerbed. Earlier we had noticed there was a couple caterpillars missing from one of the fennels. We presumed the caterpillar was one of the missing ones from the fennel in the small flowerbed. We couldn’t figure out how the caterpillar ended up on the rose bush… until we saw how fast the little fellow is and how far it can travel in a short time.It wasn’t but a few minutes until I saw the caterpillar had left the fennel and ran up and across our wood fence. (sorry about the photo quality. The little guy was moving fast.)I had read that at a certain age these species of caterpillars roamed around before they go to the chrysalis stage. I thought this caterpillar was one step away from spinning silk, so my husband got a pear tree branch for it to climb on. I carefully picked up the caterpillar and put it on the limb. We hoped that it we would get to watch it spin silk and make it’s chrysalis. But it kept climbing out onto to the leaves for a long while and then it fell off onto the ground.I watched it the whole time and was worried it would be eaten by a bird. So I got a small twig and let it climb up on it. It had become my mission to save this caterpillar (and watch it through it’s stages.) I’ve read and saw photos of how folks raise butterflies indoors, it seemed like a good idea. I decided to build the caterpillar a condo and bring it inside. I have an old aquarium that has cracks in it, that I didn’t have the heart to throw away. I’m a hoarder always thinking there’s a craft I can use any old container for even one with cracks in it.

My husband liked the idea. He got a fresh small limb and trimmed the leaves off.  He put it in the aquarium. I put a glass ramekin with a bit of water so the fennel won’t die too quickly. We added the caterpillar and some fennel. My husband thought the caterpillar might get lonely, so we went to the herb bed and got another caterpillar along with the fennel limb it was on.  Now we have 2 caterpillars as sort of indoor pets. I enjoy watching them wonder around the twigs and fennel. Hopefully, they’ll survive and make butterflies in a couple weeks or so.

Have you ever raised butterflies indoors?

Wishing you all beautiful days of flowers and butterflies.

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Happy 5th Birthday Sheli-bean!

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The top news for the week is that today is Sheli-bean’s 5th birthday. I tried to take a new photo of him to post for today, but he’s having no part of it. He thinks since it’s his birthday that he should be able to choose if he’s photographed or not. Mmm, I had to agree with him. So here’s a photo I took of him awhile back when I caught him sitting on one of our end tables. He’s such a funny boy sometimes. I decorated it a bit to celebrate his special day.

My dear sweet Sheli, we love you so very much. You’re a wonderful part of our hearts and a special part of our family. Thank you for being our wonderful bossy adorable little boy. You always cheer us up when we’re down and give us many smiles every day. Thank you so very much.

Happy 5th Birthday Sheli-bean!t3345puppy-2

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Fox Eggs

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Remember my posts Mystery Egg 2-15-2017 and Turtle Egg 4-26-2017 well, I encountered another mystery egg. This one is buried in my cedar chest planter.It was the oddest thing. I was digging up some annual bulbs and replacing them with marigolds in my cedar chest planter, a few inches deep in the soil my hand touch something hard, round and smooth. There’s only store-bought soil in the upper part of cedar chest, so I knew it wasn’t a rock. I picked the object up, lo and behold it was an egg. Oh dear, why on earth was an egg buried there? Okay, this is getting bizarre. There’s no way this is a turtle egg because I can’t imagine a turtle scaling the cedar chest wall just to lay an egg.

As I reburied the egg, I wondered what mischief it could be? I even pondered on the idea of someone was tinkering around with a magic spell. Well, what would you think? :\

It was time for some internet searching to see if anyone knew what significance buried eggs have. I was amazed to see that there’s several other folks that have found eggs buried in gardens and flower pots.I learned that turtle shells are a leathery texture, so right away I knew that this one wasn’t one and I was wrong about the egg I found in my other flower bed being one. The shells of the eggs I found are hard like a regular chicken egg, so they must be hen eggs of some sort.

Apparently Foxes and weasels bury foods in various places to store for future feasting.
To our knowledge there’s not any weasels around here, but we do know that there’s a fox in our area. Remember the Red Fox I posted a photo and video of 5-11-2016. We’ve seen a fox a few more times since then, so we suspect that a fox is responsible for the buried eggs.Cool, so the now the mystery is solved. A fox must have left the egg in the woods and is also hiding eggs in my flower beds, it’s strange though, I thought it was only the Easter Bunny that did that. 😀

Wishing you fun mysteries!

Further reading- Google search link – found an egg buried in my garden

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Potato bucket, Gardening & fan nest

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One of my potato plants grew tall enough to add more soil to the bucket. I may have went a bit over board with the soil. As you can see, I kept the plant a couple inches tall and buried the leaves, so maybe it’ll be okay. It’ll make me happy if I actually luck up and grow an edible potato or two in the buckets.
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The garden is growing and doing well.
Except for our beans. The bunnies are eating the tops out of them. We figure the beans may still mature and produce as long as the plants have some leaves and are healthy. Our squash is loaded with babies. It won’t be long until we have a nice fresh mess of straightneck squash.The cucumber vines are growing nicely and has a few blooms. We grow cucumbers for salads and to snack on. These few plants will produce enough for us for the summer.The corn looks good and is growing strong. We hope we’ll have enough corn to freeze several bags for the winter.We’re happy with our little garden. It doesn’t require much attention (yet). We like having the more compact smaller garden.

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It’s that special time of year for birds to nest. A couple of birds tried to build nests in our fans again on the back porch. My husband cleaned out the twigs and fluff. Thankfully there wasn’t an egg in the nesting. We now keep the fans running on low during the day to deter the birds from trying to build nests again.
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I hope your plants and flowers are thriving and growing well.
Have a great week!

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edited in 5-22-2017-2:45pm:
Well I didn’t have to worry about adding too much soil after all because the potato plant took care of it.

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