A new Monarch

This morning I looked at our chrysalis and saw it was time for a Monarch to emerge. You can see our chrysalis here and the dark one in the back. They look dark when it's time. It has been a chrysalis for 11 days. Here you can see the Monarch inside it's chrysalis. It emerged around 9:12 am.

Here it has emerged, it comes out fast and it's wings are small.

Then in the next 15 min. or so it grows and becomes the Monarch we all love. (My photo of it full size didn't turn out will try again.)

It will hang for several hours and since the weather is bad out it will hang even longer, I'm hoping for 36 hours. We had rain all day and storms are coming in this evening and more rain predicted for tomorrow. Monarchs just hang somewhere in a tree for safety in this weather and new Monarchs don't feed their first day anyway.

We also had another Monarch caterpillar turn into a chrysalis today.

If my first glance of the morning was for the sun, my first thought was for the butterflies it would engender. Vladimer Nabokov

Our prayers and our thoughts for all those in the path of Ike.