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Too good to be true!

What did I deserve to see--and photograph--a second monarch in our Vacaville pollinator garden this year? The first arrived July 15. The second, Aug. 21. Both were females laying eggs.

But there she was. At 10 a.m. today, this majestic female fluttered in, heading straight for the narrow-leafed milkweed, Asclepias fascicularis, where she proceeded to lay her eggs. Then it was off to the adjacent tropical milkweed, Asclepias curassavica, to deposit more eggs. Then she fluttered over to the pink gaura, Oenothera lindheimeri, for a little nectar and then to the Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifola, for another bite to eat, but territorial male longhorned bees targeted her. Hey, let me eat!

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Then it was back to lay more eggs on the two milkweeds. Then back to the Tithonia, where a surprise visitor, our butterfly-eating, well-dressed tuxedo cat, Miss Sarah Sylvia Cynthia Stout, leaped five feet into the air to grab her. She missed. (I ushered Miss SSCS out of the garden. This is the same cat that I witnessed catching and eating a cabbage white butterfly that I was trying to photograph.)

Ms. Monarch fluttered out of the garden, but half an hour later, she--or another monarch--returned to lay more eggs.

Fortunately, Ms. Monarch didn’t encounter the crab spider lying in wait on a zinnia or the praying mantis hidden in the patch of Tithonia.

Nor did she encounter the butterfly-eating cat, Miss SSCS. Did you know that cats have incredible leaping skills? The vertical leap record for a tiger is more than 12 feet, and the lion is just a few inches less,  According to the National Wildlife Federation: “The puma is, however, the best jumper of all the mammals.  Pumas, or mountain lions, can leap more than 20 feet straight up without a running start.” 

My cat thinks she’s a cougar, aka mountain lion.

It’s a tough world out there for monarchs.