I am fortunate to live a few miles away from a very cool couple
who has made their house a Monarch butterfly way station.
I have bought several milkweed plants from them in the past,
and used them to raise Monarch butterflies from egg to beautiful butterfly.
I had my new bushes just sitting out by the front porch...
... when I realized caterpillars were disappearing!
I blame these guys.
(Doesn't he look shifty?)
I thought I'd put them in my nice bug enclosure...
... but the enclosure was too short.
How was I going to save this last little guy?
(I named him Nemo, of course.)
Then I remembered a million years ago, I made my own photography light box
from an online tutorial
with nothing more than a box and some tissue paper.
Hmmm...
I got it!
I started with an enormous Amazon box...
... some cheap screening...
... and some duct tape.
(In the great "duct" vs "duck" tape wars,
I go into battle for DUCT tape.)
I CAREFULLY cut two inches in from each side
(except the bottom)
with a box cutter and a heavy-duty ruler.
It looked like this when I was done.
(I reinforced any floppy bits with duct tape.)
Then I cut the screening bigger than the hole,
but smaller than the edges,
and duct-taped it down.
For the top, I taped down one side of the screening,
but not the other three.
I reinforced the three other edges of the screen so I would have a handy flap.
I placed two milkweed plants inside...
... closed the flap,
and taaaa daaaa!
If little Nemo had hands,
I think he would give me a thumbs-up.
Bonus!
Here's an awesome timelapse video I found on the excellent website
