Catty

This year, while my dad was in Ethiopia, my mom, my sister and I were in the back alley looking
at a milkweed. A caterpillar crawled on a leaf. We were so excited. We picked the leaf and went
home. We thought it was a Viceroy butterfly, but it was a Monarch! I called it Catty. The name
Catty sounds neutral, doesn’t it? The caterpillar grew fatter and fatter on the milkweed leaves
that we fed until it molted. Molting is like when we lose skin. On an average, the caterpillar molts
about three times, before it is ready to become a butterfly. Then the caterpillar hung itself in a ‘J’
and then spun itself into a chrysalis. The chrysalis was green in color. Generally, it takes about
ten to twelve days for a butterfly to emerge from the chrysalis. Our butterfly took eleven to
emerge from the chrysalis. The day before the butterfly emerges, one can clearly see the wing
pattern of the butterfly through the chrysalis. I was asleep when my mom saw the wing pattern.
So, she clicked a picture and showed it to me the next day. When the rays of the sun hit this
ready chrysalis the butterfly pops into the new home. When I looked at the butterfly outside its
chrysalis, it looked happy to me! We left the butterfly to hang itself to dry after which it flew away
when it was ready to explore the new world. I believe Dawn Catty is somewhere flying about
sucking nectar from the flowers.