Although not strictly forensic science, these Monarch butterfly caterpillars preparing for life as a butterfly are just too good to ignore. It fascinates me how they manage to produce gold decorations – I can only assume they extract the gold from the plant? Is it even gold?  (Apologies for the red date stamp).

There are three chrysalides in the first photo, relatively easy to see.

There are seven hiding in the middle photo – can you spot them all?!

The last photo is  slightly out of focus but it’s neat to see the before and after stages so close to one another. I just hope some of the dozen or so chrysalides littering the plant and proximally located potato plants actually survive. Last year we had 100% failure rate.