I am now the proud foster parent of three tiny monarch caterpillars!  After watching a female monarch butterfly laying eggs on my milkweed on Friday, I started looking for eggs and found four possibilities.  On Tuesday morning, I went out again to check the eggs and found that one had hatched!  There under a milkweed leaf with a little crescent-shaped hole cut around it was a tiny, tiny caterpillar! Now what to do??  I googled how to raise monarch caterpillars in a plastic container with a lid.  Give them milkweed leaves to munch on,  keep it clean by removing the frass, and let them grow.  As they get bigger, they can be moved to a mesh butterfly habitat with LOTS of milkweed and eventually they will make their chrysalis and emerge as adults.  So I set up a suitable plastic container, picked off the milkweed leaf the caterpillar was on, and set it up on my dining room table. The next day, Wednesday, I went out to look at the other possible eggs and found two more caterpillars!  So now I have three rapidly growing monarch caterpillars chowing down on my milkweed.  At this point, they are still working on their first leaf, but as they get bigger they will need much more milkweed.  I sure hope my milkweed supply is ample enough!

My first freshly-hatched monarch caterpillar! The crescent cut in the leaf is a telltale sign to look for. The caterpillar was barely 3 mm long!

Family portrait! They are about 1/4 inch long now. One is at the bottom, one is near the center, and one is at the upper right.