Ovipositing future Frassing Champions

To my utter delight, a big female monarch showed up today and set about laying eggs (ovipositing) on just about every milkweed plant in my garden.  I sat on the patio and snapped as many pics as I could with the 300 mm lens since I didn't want to get close enough to bother her.  After she'd gone (about 45 minutes later), I went around checking for eggs.  And to my complete surprise, I found a bunch of first and second instar monarch caterpillars!  Which means this wasn't the first monarch to visit my garden this summer.  I collected several of the cats and have moved them to an enclosure where I'll raise them, hopefully, to full butterfly form. I also gathered a few of the leaves with eggs.  

Now, had this lovely creature shown up a mere 8 days from now, she'd certainly be in medal contention for  Ovipositing in the AOG...however, I'm thinking that her progeny will be busting out of their eggs at some point during the Games at which time they will be ready for the Frassing champioinships.  Don't know what frass is?  Well, in laymen's terms...it's poop.  Yep,caterpillars of all kinds are champion poopers.  And being that these cats will be monarchs...well, I'd say that a medal is virtually guaranteed.  Stay tuned...

I posted three other shots on Flickr, starting here with a monarch cat shedding its skin, followed by a shot showing an egg and a first instar monarch cat and finally the most curious little caterpillar I've ever seen, adorned with a fancy flower bonnet.  

it's a stinky hot day again without even much of a breeze to keep things tolerable.  Dog days of summer...But on the upside, it's barely a week before the start of the AOG.  And if you aren't up on the Alternative Olympic Games, check out the updates from our correspondents around the globe.  I'm here to tell you that Team Oz is already putting on a very impressive showing, as is Team UK.  And keep an eye on the Pacific Northwest US stadium where things are...ducky!  Games start on 8 August - get ready.  In the meantime, if you want to share photos of your athletes in training, tag them AOG2016.

Cheers, people.
Debbi