I was outside watering yesterday – no rain in the forecast for at least 4 days, the drought continues – and I stopped to check out the milkweed. This isn’t something I do religiously, but I do like to see if there are any monarch caterpillars in sight.
I saw three of them! I don’t think I’ve ever seen two at the same time, let alone three.
All of them were chomping on the leaves.
Most of the caterpillars I encounter are on the large group of milkweed that grows at the bottom of the big garden bed. There’s also some milkweed growing on the far side of the porch, but I’ve never seen a caterpillar there. (Doesn’t mean there aren’t any, of course, just that I’ve never seen one.)
This group of milkweed is where I’ve seen Monarch butterflies laying eggs.
I’m happy to know we’ll see at least three new Monarch butterflies emerge this season.
I took a video of one of them eating and it’s on my Instagram Stories, if you’re at all interested.
Today, I work with Jim in the afternoon. Should be fun!
Okay, my friends. I’m off to do some more prep, make Don finish his deductions, and water everything. Again.
Stay safe.
Happy Monday.
Oh my Claudia, lucky you to have such lovely guests at your cottage. You served up the right meal! I tried milkweed here in CO and it was literally covered tip to top in bright orange aphids. They must not have been very tasty as the ladybugs that gobble up our usual yellow aphids wouldn’t go near them.
Enjoy your day reuniting and working with friends. Verna
I’m very happy to see them, that’s for sure!
Thanks, Verna.
Stay safe.
love your happy news … seeing monarch caterpillars and a dear friend/ co-worker again! know you will enjoy it all. :)
overcast morning, a decent chance of rain and getting to spend time with some members of my family today … i am enjoying all that. :)
happy, safe monday to everyone.
kathy
Oh, for some rain! I’m glad you might be getting some today, Kathy.
Stay safe.
Wonderful photos; so encouraging about the monarchs. Hope your day has been going great (and productive!); we were only 80 degrees at 10am, so maybe our Southern Calif weather will be a little better today.
Rescue dog goes for his first appointment with the new veterinarian today; start of his new life as ours with full adoption after fostering him for six months. Found out that, a year ago, when the dog was found ‘out there’ by someone in hot-weather July, he was ‘covered in foxtails’ and one had embedded in his paw to cause an abscess. My poor boy. Those people couldn’t manage him and instead took him to the rescue group saying, “This dog needs to live on a ranch; he’s untrained and distrustful.” Well, that was July of 2021 and this is August of 2022, and we did a meet & greet with the new vet (our vet) last Friday and the aforesaid formerly-‘unmanageable’ shepherd just lolled all over the vet’s feet and turned over on his back for a tummy rub, a good sign (when at the rescue facility’s vet, he bit two people in the animal clinic last September). My compassion for this dog and all rescue dogs gets bigger when I think of our dog having gone through at least six ‘owners’ in six months, yet we expect the dog to be ‘normal’ from so much uncertainty and inconsistency. It just took time and patience, and we’ve got a long way to go yet with him, but I love him and feel a strong need to protect him. It must be the ‘mothering’ instinct in me. I’m looking forward to getting some answers on him today as we have a very experienced veterinarian who’s seen just about every kind of breed and temperament of canine in his many years as an animal doctor. Fingers crossed for a good outcome!
Vicki, I am so glad to hear that through your love and patience this dog has a bright future ahead of him. We have three rescue dogs that reward us with much companionship and love. One of them came from an absolutely horrible puppy mill, and when she couldn’t produce puppies, she was not fed. Thankfully, a wonderful lady came to her rescue and then she came to us. We have had her almost three years, and while she has made great strides, she still cowers down around unfamiliar people. My husband and I talk often of what this poor little girl had to endure. Thanks for being a special person who listens and cares for those creatures with no voice. I do believe that Claudia has created a blog with the nicest, kindest readers.
Please keep us updated on the dog’s progress.
Well, we didn’t get very far with this first official veterinary visit. Although on the previous week’s meet & greet with the vet outside the clinic doors (and no white coat on the vet!), when the dog was all over him with slobbers and new love, today was a whole different experience, as the dog reverted to what’s in the notes from the rescue center and their vet; would not allow our vet to touch him in the exam room and became a vicious, snarling beast, even with two different muzzles; absolute sixty-plus pounds of fury. It was frustrating and upsetting (especially for the dog!) but I think my husband and I somewhat expected this (and, believe me, at the vet’s instruction, the dog was pretty doped up; he has slept ALL day from the drugs but I think also because he might have been fatigued by stress of the visit).
We tried everything … we even entered the clinic thru a side door to avoid the lobby, left the screen door open to the clinic yard so that the dog wouldn’t feel confined in the small exam room; the vet again didn’t wear his white coat. Still, the poor dog just went wild. I’ve never experienced anything like it.
The vet is quiet-spoken, I could see he was pondering, then he said, “There’s no hope the dog will ever NOT be like this; this is how it will be for life, no matter how much you rehab him; something has happened to him in his past where he wasn’t handled right with someone working with him in some kind of treatment scenario, possibly where he was constrained improperly, maybe not even in a proper clinical setting; there’s no understanding of it, since we lack his history, except to realize he isn’t forgetting he was hurt; he’s got bad memories.” I was surprised he was so candid, but we needed to know. This doctor has aggressive pitbulls for patients; he’s exchanged some stories; he knows what he’s talking about even in this very early evaluation of our poor boy. And, so it goes …
… I burst into tears because when the vet left the room and my husband removed the muzzle, the dog ran to me while I sat on the bench, put his big feet over my shoulders with an imploring look on his face, “Mom, I don’t like this; get me outta here!”
So, okay, next step. We know now that he can never be examined by a veterinarian unless he’s anesthesized, so he’s going to be quite an expense for us as seniors in retired life on a fixed income. It means he can’t even go in for yearly immunizations without getting zapped; today, he was fasting, but of course they couldn’t even draw blood from him for a complete blood panel. Now, we have an appointment in two weeks, the vet says he knows how to poke him from behind so that the dog is quickly but safely ‘out’, and then they’ll do the works: Check ears (which are bothering him!), clean teeth (which are dirty!), check trachea (for his cough), examine paws (he overly licks them; might be an allergy); go all over him to check for any lumps or bumps, cut his nails, xray his hips so that we can have any kind of a baseline about dysplasia which can unfortunately plague this breed; we also might do an ultrasound for the same kind of baseline about stomach tumors, which is what killed our other dog, because this is a red merle Aussie who can be in something like a 33 percentage category for cancer. We’ll also do some light grooming as he has a double coat and gets easily matted in his hind quarters; probably give him his immunizations a month early (not sure about that yet). He can be ‘under’ okay, per the vet, as he does have a good heart (that was the ONLY thing we accomplished today as the vet DID succeed, ever briefly, with the stethoscope at the very beginning of the consultation); the vet and his techs will of course work efficiently. They know what they’re doing and to not ‘overload’ the anesthesized animal.
Between anesthesia, shots, teeth cleaning and xray plus ultrasound, I have my own work cut out for me in the in-between time to figure out how the heck we’re going to pay for it all, but it has to be done, and then maybe the dog will be ‘good’ for another year (in which time I’d have the year to budget for the next go ’round!). We’ve of course had ‘friends’ tell us we should cut our losses now and get out from under this, but we just can’t. As Claudia said weeks ago to me, “You’re a family now.” I really do think we’re this dog’s last hope. He’s just been thru too much already. It’s not a ‘hero’ thing with us; it’s just being presented with something we have to see through; and if you love animals, you can’t turn your back.
I’m so sorry to hear the visit was a rough one, but it sounds as if your new veterinarian knows how to approach and treat damaged pets. Poor baby.
xoxo
Dottie, how kind of you to leave a comment; thank you. Look at the wonderful person that YOU are; these dog stories can break a heart for sure.
I agree; Claudia’s blog is amazing, but it’s because Claudia herself is the magnet for all of us, with her love and compassion, intelligence and whimsy. We have a very interesting blog owner in Claudia!
We went through much the same thing with our Riley. He’d been treated terribly, but we didn’t know anything about just what it was that happened to him. He had no social skills – thankfully, he loved Scout. But you couldn’t come at him from behind, he’d growl and lunge. (He bit Don once, but only once.) He had terrible separation anxiety. He cowered.
Finally I went to an animal psychic who told me honestly that she didn’t know a whole lot, but she did know that he had been chained up on sort lead for hours and hours at a time. No real interaction with humans. And it explained why he was so wary of someone coming upon him from behind, why he didn’t like you to touch his neck.
It’s worth it, isn’t it? I can’t say that Riley changed completely. Those issues were always there, but he grew to trust us. I remember the thump thump of his tail when he heard us coming downstairs in the morning. I have to stop writing about him. I’m about to cry.
So heartened by the love and commitment you and your husband have given him. A name yet?
Stay safe, Vicki.
It’s making me cry, too, when you speak of Riley, Claudia. Scout didn’t have as many issues as he did, did she. Why do any of us stick with it? Can’t go back; it has to stop with someone; no animal deserves to be harmed and bounced around between temporary homes, in a constant state of bewilderment, not knowing who to trust or how to be.
I was going over in my mind how far we’ve come. Both my husband and I have been bit a couple of times (I’m talking breaking-the-skin biting, drawing blood); we almost gave up 10000 times since February. We went from an effortless-to-care-for, docile, gentle, elegant, elderly female dog (retriever/German Shep mix; I still grieve the loss of her, our girl) to a complicated-to-care-for, angry, confused, untrusting, BIG and rough, YOUNG male dog (Australian Shep, maybe not a mix; it’s looking like he may be ‘purebred’; it’s not an easy breed; they need exercise, stimulation, play and work [and we were clueless, knowing nothing of the breed going into it; using our hearts not our heads]).
How, in the beginning, I could not get in our dog’s face and hug him. No fast moves around him; don’t try to step over him. Don’t reach from behind. Don’t pet here; don’t pet there. Only pet HERE. He’d guard where he was sleeping and lunge if you tried to walk past him. He tried to climb the walls. Tried to climb up shelves and bookcases; anything to get out. This went on for WEEKS. We were afraid he’d break the window glass.
He still paces in the evening although it’s better; the new vet, in just initial talks, doesn’t want the dog on anti-anxiety meds anymore; we’ll have to see how it goes. It took us five months just to get the dog to poop and pee in his own yard; somebody must have put a terrible fear in him about it. He periodically sets up a howling episode for no reason we can discern, and I wonder if he misses his first human with whom he must have bonded. We’ve never had a full night’s sleep in six months because he still/always does SOME measure of whimpering in the bedtime hours. But he doesn’t flip open the kitchen garbage can anymore! He no longer grabs human food off the table or kitchen counter. He’s become a great watchdog for anybody coming to the front door. And he learned that getting petted for hours all evening during TV time on the sofa is quite nice. He has learned to cuddle and that it feels good. He has learned that it’s okay to let his guard down and be loved.
The name continues to be a problem. My husband doesn’t like a revised spelling. Other people mispronounce it. I hate it. Absolutely hate the name. We have to come to a better decision soon. Just don’t want to confuse the dog any further on anything when he’s come so far and made such strides; I’m going to talk further with the vet about it.
xoxoxo
You two are angels on earth to be so patient with this poor boy. I cannot even imagine what abuse he must have suffered in the past. If he is a purebred, he may well have come from a puppy mill. Those places should be shut down because so many dogs are kept in filthy cages with terrible food and no healthcare. My brother rescued an abused dog who was afraid of everything. She wouldn’t even climb stairs, and would not trust anyone. After a couple of years of patience with my brother, she became the gentlest, sweetest dog. So don’t give up hope. He may respond better than even the vet thinks.
Lucky you, with those monarchs! I think you are “chosen!”
They’re still out there, chowing down! Two of them have demolished half a leaf.
Thanks Jeanie.
Stay safe.
Ah! Monarch caterpillars! A summer memory for me is finding caterpillars and hunting fresh milkweed greens for them, and watching them grow, morph and emerge as butterflies. I must have watched this a hundred times as a child. My children enjoyed this a few times, but not like I did. Now I have a grandson who has never seen this. Love your photos!
Monarch caterpillars are a joy to behold!
Thanks ever so much for sharing the pics — they’re marvelous and cheering!
Saw a few Monarch butterflies earlier in the summer. Haven’t seen a single Monarch caterpillar this year. The heat & dry conditions have been tough here and unfortunately, the milkweed has suffered.
Stay safe & well.
It’s been extremely hot and dry here as well. But somehow, the milkweed hasn’t suffered.
Stay safe, Amy.