My first caterpillar! I have my landscaping course to thank for it. I learned that you need
two types of plants to attract butterflies. A nectar plant and a host plant. I, like most people,
had lots of nectar plants but who knew that they don’t lay their eggs on them? So I planted
several native Desert Milkweed as food for hungry caterpillars.

I had seen several Queens in the past few weeks and after consulting a book and google,
I’m pretty sure this is a Queen caterpillar. Whatever it is, I can hardly contain my excitement
at the thought of being able to document the life cycle!

(I used Photoshop to take the color out of the background. It was almost dark when I spotted the
caterpillar and I’m no good with flash so the image was really blue. I shot it with a Canon G10).