At about 7:00 pm on Saturday evening I checked on the caterpillar and he was still in the same spot, unchanged. At about 9:00 pm I came to check on him again and now he wasn't a caterpillar anymore. Instead I found a totally different life form. I freaked out ! How could this happen so quickly? I expected some kind of cocoon spinning to occur. I was wrong. Butterflies don't spin cocoons, they pupate. In other words, this appendageless creature bursts and wriggles out of the caterpillar skin. Before this happens, the caterpillar does spin a little bit of silk to help anchor the pupa at the bottom tip and spins a girdle made of two strands that suspends it (the silk on the glass makes it very hard to photograph). It's hard to imagine that this thing is actually alive. Too bad I didn't see the transformation happen.

I found out that this stage lasts 9-12 days. Would a healthy butterfly actually emerge?