A Day as a Viceroy
Description
It had been ten days and one hour. Ten days inside the chrysalis, ten days of undergoing a complete change in body structure. One hour spent hanging upside down, waiting for her wings to dry. Those were new to the viceroy – the black and orange wings. As a caterpillar, she had been green, brown, and white. She had lived on this same leaf since birth, using it as a food source and a shelter during the long months of hibernation. She had watched from this leaf as birds, snakes, and turtles attacked the other caterpillars, who had been hiding from the sun and the predators beneath the shelter of their own leaf. But these attacks didn’t frighten the viceroy. She knew she would be safe, because she spent her days on the top of her leaf, producing white silk and spreading her body in just the right way, so that any animal passing by would see nothing other than a bird dropping. And who would want to eat a bird dropping?
Repository Citation
Clouse, Sarah, "A Day as a Viceroy" (2020). Runkle Woods Symposia. 10.
https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/woods_symposium/2020/virtual/10
A Day as a Viceroy
It had been ten days and one hour. Ten days inside the chrysalis, ten days of undergoing a complete change in body structure. One hour spent hanging upside down, waiting for her wings to dry. Those were new to the viceroy – the black and orange wings. As a caterpillar, she had been green, brown, and white. She had lived on this same leaf since birth, using it as a food source and a shelter during the long months of hibernation. She had watched from this leaf as birds, snakes, and turtles attacked the other caterpillars, who had been hiding from the sun and the predators beneath the shelter of their own leaf. But these attacks didn’t frighten the viceroy. She knew she would be safe, because she spent her days on the top of her leaf, producing white silk and spreading her body in just the right way, so that any animal passing by would see nothing other than a bird dropping. And who would want to eat a bird dropping?
