On August 30th I found a monarch caterpillar attached to my dog’s rope outside. I have no idea how long he’d been in there or if he’d been dragged around when my dog was hooked up. As soon as I noticed him I stopped using the rope. I couldn’t move him off because he’d already spun that white ball of silk and attached himself to It.

Anyway, everything proceeded as usual with him going into his chrysalIs. Now, I’ve been raising monarchs all summer and each caterpillar only took 10 days to emerge from the chrysali, so I started to get concerned when this one passed 15 days and still hadn‘t begun to get dark. At 18 days I decided to bring him inside because I was worried about the cold nights. I live in upstate NY and the September nights are usually in the 40s.

i brought the chrysalis inside and attached it to some twine. Well finally, after 21 days, it hatched today. Came out with no problem but immediately upon hatching it expelled this super dark green liquid from its abdomen. I know they usually expel a red liquid after it’s pumped through their wings but this was different. It then started working right away on its proboscis. The wings began to uncurl but not as fast as the other butterflies. Fast forward to about 4 hours later and the wings are about half the size they should be and the abdomen is still swollen as big as when it first hatched.

i had a butterfly a few weeks ago that hatched and the wings were perfect except for one small crinkle and after a few days of feeding it and bringing it out to sit in the sun, it took off. This butterfly’s wings are MUCH more wrinkled.

so, does anyone know why these weird things occurred with this butterfly? Will the abdomen shrink down to a normal size? Why is it remaining swollen for so long?

Any info anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated. Thanks