There have been enough adult Monarch butterflies flitting around, and, happily, plenty of the new milkweeds that the lepidopterans love for egg-laying, that, frankly, I'm more than a little disheartened to be finding very few caterpillars. Of course, the lack is hardly surprising. There's a lot of ground to cover in the searching, so I'm certainly missing most of the youngsters, and, perhaps more to the point, the vast majority of hatchlings don't make it past their first day out of the egg. It's a cruel, cruel natural world out there. So when I found this gorgeous almost-full-grown Monarch caterpillar, who was displaying the lurid colors that warned potential predators about its toxicity,it made my day. The youngster was getting ready for the walkabout before pupation. Now, if it can only run the remaining gauntlet and succeed in metamorphosing into an adult... and fly all the way to Mexico. If only... if only...