Yesterday the largest of the caterpillars started wandering around the cage. I suspected it was ready to find a place to make its cocoon, so I put some bare sticks around the edges of the cage – but it decided it liked the bars of the cage better.
Last night it was working at the bars – waving its head around and back and forth the way a monarch caterpillar does when it’s attaching its pad before it makes a chrysalis. This morning I saw that it had made a cocoon. It’s about 5 inches long, and very transparent – I can see the caterpillar inside. There’s a piece of leaf sticking to the threads of silk.