Hatch day! Got outside at about 5:20 am. Just me, a cup of tea and my iPhone. Right after 6 a.m., the monarch crysalis started to open. The stupid camera couldn’t seem to focus on the right thing, but you can just make out the split starting from the bottom…

Seconds later she popped out!

Note the tiny wings and the huge abdomen. Over the next hour and a half, Bix and David and I watched as she hung there pumping fluid from the thorax into her wings…

You can see her wings gradually grow while her abdomen skinnifies, all Jenny Craiglike…

Then she opened her wings. I could barely fit her in the shot!

Scarcely over two hours after she began her transformation from pupa to butterfly, our baby took her first flight…

* INSERT TEARS OF JOY HERE *

This evening I discovered the newborn fluttering around our sumacs, so she’s still here. Hopefully she’s enjoying our butterfly buffet before she heads south.

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Addendum #1:

After watching Godzilla vs. The Thing  (also known as Godzilla vs. Mothra) last night, Bix and I dubbed our magical monarch “Butt-thra” in deference to our favorite winged monster, Mothra…

Addendum #2:

Bix requests that you join us for a song before you go, okay?

FYI, If you’re not familiar with the Singing Science series by Motivation Records, check it out. Fantastic and fun. (Space Songs and the two Nature records are our favorites.)

At about lunchtime I posted that there wasn’t much going on with our butterfly friend. But look what she’s gone and done in the last two hours…

Can you believe it? It’s almost butterfly time!

Our monarch butterfly is still cooking on days 8 and 9…

I let our very rainy weekend stop me from snapping a shot on Day 7. But I have a feeling our friend looked quite similar to the above.

So is Tuesday hatch day? It will be 10 days since she climbed into position and that’s supposedly how long metamorphosis lasts. I may have to hover over her all day tomorrow to capture her emergence!

I think I see the green beginning to shift a little. Perhaps our butterfly friend’s change to orange is beginning? Or I’m imagining things…

Looking quite a bit different from Days 1 and 2. Four more days to go!

Our butterfly friend is looking fairly unchanged from day 4…

to day 5…

But I imagine there’s a lot happening in there. As it turns out, the pupa is clear and the color you see is the green butterfly on the inside. As she gets closer to “done,” the color will change to the bright monarch orange we know and love.

Only five more days to go!

Day 3

Days 1 and 2.