Monarch Monday Reaches Tuesday

A nice fat instar absolutely devouring the leaves of Common Milkweed.

Big caterpillar, big poop. Anyway, I photographed this caterpillar and its frass on Friday. The animal was still there Saturday for my Bugging Out group.

I also saw this one on a neighboring Common Milkweed on Friday. It was there Saturday…

and, thankfully, on Sunday for my Bugging Out With Kids group. The rest of these images are of this one on Sunday:

Gobbles up the entire leaf. Look at the stubs of the leaves above.

Oh-oh, what are these rice-like white oblongs near the head?

Droplets of milkweed latex was my first thought, but all three are roughly the same shape. These may be Tachinid fly eggs; more than a dozen species of these flies parasitize Monarch caterpillars, some of them laying their eggs on the surface of the caterpillar (the maggots will burrow in).