As some of you know, I have been fascinated by the caterpillars I discovered earlier this year, eating my dill.  A little research told me that they will turn into beautiful swallowtail butterflies.  I was having so much fun watching them munching away.  I would watch them grow, from hatching out of their eggs, to big fat cats, about ready to go into their cocoons.  One evening, I informed my husband that a whole new batch of babies had hatched.  I had about three or four big ones left, and then varying sizes in between them and the hatchlings.  I went out to the dill patch during my lunch hour the next day, and all the big ones were gone.  I figured they had gone off to make cocoons.  Then I noticed the babies were mostly gone, as well as the others.  I found a couple midsize ones, laying on the ground wriggling around dying, with their little orange protector things sticking out on their head.  They poke these orange antenna looking things out when they are threatened, and they emit a bad odor.  I have no idea if they were attacked by ants, wasps, or just what was happening to them, but I was sad.  😦  So, to try to make this long story a little shorter, some more hatched, and I found them dead not much later, just hanging there on the dill.  More eggs have since shown up.  This time, I’ve been waiting for them to hatch.  We did get rid of an ant bed that had appeared under the dill, also, just in case the ants were the bad guys.  I went out and cut the dill stems that had babies on them, and yes, I brought them inside.  So far, so good.  I have left a few outside, to see if they fare better than the others.

These are some of the ones I brought indoors.

These are pics of ones outside, and then, as I was taking a picture of them, I realized how really pretty the dill looks, and just starting taking pics of the dill.

  So then, that started me off on one of those “run around the yard and see what else I can find to take pictures of” sprees.  Therefore, over the next few days, I will be sharing pics with you of the things that caught my eye.  Hope you enjoyed the caterpillar-dill show!  There will be progress reports 🙂 .  I leave you with one of my favorite pics, that I took earlier this summer of a couple of the big ones.