Swallowtail butterfly invasion

Hello from Southeast Harbor, Maine! I'm relaxing on board, bundled up in winter clothes, listening to the rain and wind and waiting for the storm to pass. In the meantime I am cleaning up the boat, cooking, catching up on sleep, visiting with friends on the boat next door (Esprit), and writing a blog post....

When we returned to the boat in NC, we discovered that parsley in the herb bucket, while still alive, had been severely pruned back....by eight striped caterpillars: black swallowtails!

Some folks use pesticides to remove these or pick them off by hand, but we welcomed them and brought them with us when we sailed to New England. On the way, they reached maturity, barfed out the remaining undigested food when their bodies quit accepting it, crawled off to find a safe place, and pupated. Some pupated on the plants,

others we caught before they left and put in a jar until they pupated, some we found as they crawled onto me,

and two others hid away: one in my hat

and the other behind a cushion. 

Cynthia left for MI, disappointed that she would miss their emergence. I managed to sail to Chatham and get a mooring before the first emerged and flew to shore.

Two looked as though they might not emerge before I headed to Maine and I KNOW they can't fly to shore from the boat miles out at sea, so I used a clothes pin to secure their stem or cardboard to the ivy on an old ivy-covered mailbox post.... and we got to see one actually emerging!

My mom recalled that they might be popping out and asked me to glance at them when we returned from a walk. I found one in the act of emerging from the pupa, a process that only takes a minute or so: what luck!

Over the next fifteen minutes it pumped the wings up like an inflatable pool toy until they looked ugly,

then pretty good, 

then until all the wrinkles disappeared.

 Then the bug waited for an hour or so for the wings to slowly harden, the soft, floppy, perfect wings swinging in the occasional breeze. We tired of "watching paint dry" and, when we checked a bit later, the butterfly had flown.

And yes, they ARE native to Cape Cod as well as NC, so we were not introducing an odd species.