It's almost a shame that Monarchs hatch out of their chrysalis. They're a really pretty emerald green with gold trim.
Slowly as they start to hatch these colors fade away, slowly revealing the true prize within.
This most recent photo was how it looked this morning. I said to myself, "I'm going to take this to work with me and photograph it there." So I show up and I'm waiting to be let inside. I take a peak down in the container and find it's already hatched and is walking about. The wings are as limp and floppy as a silk handkerchief. Through the course of the day he (it had two dark spots on the middle of the rear wings) inflated and dried his wings. Work is a little bit more dimly lit for my pictures to come out good so there are no photos of this.
Once I got home that afternoon I released him out on the Showy Milkweed in the small meadow garden.
The plant has unfortunately fallen over, but that didn't stop the Monarch at all.
Currently I have two more chrysalises in a screened in cage and several more caterpillars out on the plants. I'll likely have more images of Monarchs in the coming months.
