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| My ever hungry caterpillars |
Since that 2nd skin change, my caterpillars have been more of a handful than they've ever been before. I feel like they've reached toddler stage. In their first week of life, they were only 2mm and would spend most of their time rarely straying from the leaves I've given them, which took them a couple of days to devour. Now, at 2cm, they are extremely mobile and have a ferocious appetite. I place some new leaves in their (slightly bigger than previous) box and they will demolish most of it in just a few hours.
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| Going under the kitchen towel! |
When it comes to doing the daily clean, where I replace the sheet of kitchen towel and remove the leaves that they're done with, replacing with new ones, it is now more of a chore than it was a week ago. To move the caterpillars, you can not move them by hand. Instead, you use a paint brush and a teaspoon. You need to gently coax them onto the spoon with the brush to move them to the new kitchen towel covered in fresh bramble leaves. However, the caterpillars are now at a stage where they'd love to make things difficult for you. Not only are they crawling all over the place, even under the old kitchen towel and the underside of the box's lid, they also hold onto the towel as tightly as they can and refusing to let go. An instinctive natural response that works in defence against birds predating them in the wild. It is a great tactic, but an annoying one for me while I'm trying to clean them out.
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