August is the month to start searching the milkweeds for mini-monarchs, the luridly colored caterpillars of the equally luridly colored—although differently lurid (yes, even this color-challenged observer can see the difference between Monarch larvae and the orange and black adult butterflies)—and just before lunchtime, I spotted the first of what I hope will be a bumper crop of lepidopterans. I'd seen a female Monarch flitting about a local milkweed patch but I couldn't locate any eggs on the young plants the moms-to-be favor for oviposition. However, the eggs are hard to see in the general hairiness of the leaves, so I wasn't surprised that I'd missed at least one. The kid had probably hatched yesterday and was clearly working on Task One for a Monarch caterpillar: mowing the "lawn"—the stretch of protective hairs known to botanists as trichomes—in preparation for the dangerous task of eating the greenery. Milkweed gets its name from the high-pressure latex that oozes and spurts from the leaves, and these caterpillars often drown in the resulting flood. But the larvae are not without inborn skills at avoiding catastrophe. I hoped the kid was well-endowed with all the tricks of the survival trade.