Monarch magic

Following up on a few other Monarch-related posts, I came close to capturing the complete transformation of this guy (and he is a guy), who my daughter discovered over the weekend:

This is the same cocoon pic I posted the other day. 

As soon as you see the cocoon darkening, you know that the end is nigh.  For the cocoon stage, that is. 

For a couple of hours, I returned to inspect the situation about every twenty minutes.  I noticed the thing beginning to split open...

...but then I had to make a phone call, and he popped out and began expanding his wings too quickly for me to capture the intervening stages.  Would that real life would just stop for a while and I could just sit in the garden at my leisure in the middle of a work day. 

Onward and upward, leaving the old home behind.  Those two back dots you see embedded within the black stripe on his inner wings signify that he's a male. 



It's extremely tricky to witness the entire emergence.  They do it on their own time.  Nothing happens, nothing happens, and then when your back is turned, everything happens at once.  Sort of reminds me of baseball that way.

Happy Tuesday.