Farewell To Lazarus

I was surprised to see Lazarus moving about in the middle of the afternoon; I watched as he crawled down the length of the birch twig and, having reached the limit of his enclosure, settled at the end of the box.
Knowing that anytime now he would be moving away from the host plant and looking for ground cover, I took him into the garden and rested his twig on the gooseberry stem, below the netting to protect him from birds.
And what did he do? Looped his way straight through the mesh and stuck himself on the outside edge of the bush, as if to say 'come and eat me'. Shortly afterwards, it began to rain, gently at first then heavily for ages. It was hard but I resisted dashing out to find him shelter.

I'm confident this was the right action to take because we are going away for a few days and my neighbours, lovely as they are, have enough to do with feeding two bickering cats without having to source caterpillar food as well.

I look forward to next May, when, if he survives, he should emerge from his pupa - I hope he comes to visit.