Rain, Rain, DON'T Go Away
—and Interesting Insects
Thanks to recent rains I was recalling the children’s nursery rhyme, Rain, rain, go away; come again some other day—and decided that here in the Sonoran Desert, a more appropriate version of this rhyme is:
Rain, rain, DON’T go away;
AND come again some other day.
Here’s my Perpetual Journal art celebrating one of our recent monsoon storms.
The rain also brought the arrival of more insects, which I chronicled the next week in my Perpetual Journal (probably not coincidentally the same week I illustrated another insect for my PJ in 2023).
I very much enjoyed studying the Charcoal Seed Bugs and Ironclad Beetles that I illustrated for my PJ. The whole process of seeing something awesome in nature (like unfamiliar bugs), taking photos of the subjects (to enable me to identify the subjects and zoom in to better see details I can’t see with my naked eyes), and then illustrating the subjects, is something I find fascinating!
Speaking of insects…Hubby & I have seen so many Queen Butterfly larvae on our Milkweeds recently that we have dubbed the larvae the Q Continuum!
The Q Continuum
“Q” is for Queen, of course, but it’s also a nod to the Q Continuum in Star Trek, for the Trekkies amongst us! 🖖 The past couple of weeks we’ve been observing and trying to keep track of 12 Queen Butterfly caterpillars on our Milkweed: larvae K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, and V.
Our 12 Queen larvae friends haven’t appeared to be doing too well, though, and we wonder if it’s due to the heat (with daily high temps in the 105°-110° F. range). Here’s the current status of the members of our Q Continuum:
Five larvae (K, L, M, Q, & V) have disappeared (although two of these were large enough that they may have wandered off-world looking for a place to pupate)
Four larvae (P, R, S, & T) are of unknown status (translation: these are smaller larvae that may be on their Milkweed host plants but it’s too hot outside for me to try to find them right now!)
Two larvae (N & U) moved on, shall we say, to the Big Milkweed in the Sky. 😢
One larger larva (O) is still alive and has been hanging out on the shady side of the Milkweed stems! 🤩
We saw all sizes of our Queen larvae exhibiting an odd behavior recently: resting in a sphinx-like position. At first it seemed this was happening only when our temps were >108° F., but then we saw this at night also. This isn’t the J-ready-to-pupate position but more of an angled position. We’re wondering if this is a cooling mechanism. If anyone knows, please leave a Comment for this post!
To end on a lighter note…here’s a fun quote about caterpillars:
"Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar."
- Bradley Millar
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So glad for the rain!! I also prefer your version… hopefully the queens all survive ok that type of heat can be intense