I frequently see one or two Giant Swallowtail butterflies flying high and fast across my yard, but until this one paused to puddle on my driveway several years ago, I couldn't get a decent photo.

Got her! 15 Sept 07 one laid eggs on both my Wild Lime and my Grapefruit trees! I kidnapped a few eggs to raise inside.

Giant Swallowtail butterflies also lay eggs on Hercules Club Trees.

Giant Swallowtails and many other butterflies 'puddle'. They get nutrients from various liquids on the ground.  This one was sipping from the driveway where I'd recently cleaned out the salt tank for my water filter.  I put a salt pellet and some water in the same spot every so often for years, but never saw another puddle there again (darn it!)

Aside from being extremely ugly, and truly looking like a bird turd on a leaf, these are NOT fun caterpillars to raise unless you have all the time and patience in the world at your disposal. They spin web-like silk and stick to their position with it.

When you raise caterpillars, you have to clean the container daily. It's mighty hard to clean with the caterpillars stuck to it! I kept nudging them onto the new leaves I brought, but they didn't scoot right on like most other caterpillars do. Instead, they sat stubbornly in place refusing to budge.

 When you're in a hurry on a week night because you need to cook and do so many other things, these caterpillars can use up all of the patience and time you have and more. It was well worth it once, but I'm not sure if I'll raise them again.

Before I raised these troublesome Giant Swallowtail Butterflies, this was what most of my pictures of them looked like:

Giant Swallowtail Butterflies are really big. If they were small, I'm not sure I'd even know I had them around because they fly fast and high and move around a lot. I barely notice that they're around most of the time, but it's awesome when I see one.

I've seen them perched on my Firebush and Plumbago, but I couldn't tell if they were nectaring because as soon as I started moving toward them, they flew away again.

I saw one puddle in 05, and I saw one lay eggs on a tree I've had for 7 years in 07. Obviously, I wasn't standing outside staring at the tree the whole time, but I do spend time outside watching butterflies, so you see how it's not all that satisfying to plant for Giant Swallowtails. It's mighty hard to get near a wild one, and at least here, they don't linger in view where I can enjoy them. Ok, I do enjoy their occasional fast darts across my yard, but when I go outside, I can always count on seeing Zebra Heliconians and White Peacocks so I'm more inclined to add additional plants for them than for the Giant Swallowtails.

Did I mention that they're also stinky caterpillars? When you bother them, and they do consider being coaxed off of an old dry leaf and onto a nice fresh one a bother, they stick out their bright red scent gland (um, stink gland) to make you go away. It's called an osmerterium. They don't smell nearly as bad as the Polydamas Swallowtails that eat the stinking Pipe Vine.

After too many days of high maintenance caterpillar care, they finally quit eating and suspended themselves to make their chrysalis (sigh of relief!):

I just realized that despite all the times I picked up the camera and was going to photograph the chrysalis, I never got to it. My last one is hanging now, so I'll try to remember to snap a photo after it forms. Meanwhile, here is the first of my Giant Swallowtail butterflies that emerged:

Well, once again I've made a page that's too long, so you'll need to visit Giant Swallowtails Page Two for the rest of this butterfly story.