Nature Walk | Do Not Disturb!

Taking a break from the job of NOT blogging to post a little PSA.  I haven't been blogging, but I have a lot of photos that I could be blogging about.  

Mostly nature photos.  Of course.

I've been waiting to see the Monarch caterpillar and behold, I spotted a few in a favorite spot, Trustom Pond, a federal wildlife refuge.  Refuge is the key word here since that's the point of my PSA.

The refuge has a lot of milkweed, but even so ... very few caterpillars.  It does make me wonder if the Monarch is in fact endangered.  It's controversial I guess.  They may be endangered, they may not.  Only in the midwest.  Only in the east.  Only in the south.  I've read it all and who knows what is right?

Since this is a refuge, you are encouraged to visit, but must leave nature the way you found it.  And so comes my PSA.  After spotting my caterpillar, photographing him, and exclaiming my excitement to another nature watcher by the pond, the nature watcher told me she saw children walking out of the refuge with a milkweed stem and caterpillar to take it home.

This saddened the nature watcher as it does me.  The children OF COURSE did not know better, but their parents should have.  Removing the caterpillar will more than likely be its demise.  Nature needs to be respected at the refuge.

I'll leave this post with a photo and request from one nature watcher and a Monarch caterpillar (wink):

It is amazing what these little buggers go through to become butterflies, and travel so far to overwinter in Mexico, and then come back again!