Swallowtail

[lblanchard]

The black swallowtail caterpillar seemed to have gone missing when I checked this morning. Then I saw his large self fairly far up the stem/trunk of my variegated basil, which is in the same pot with all the parsley. Accidental detour, or does he plan to pupate there?

And why do I think of all caterpillars as male?

EDIT: Here's a < href="http://bugguide.net/node/view/33939">caption from a website telling how long it took a caterpillar to go from first instar to butterfly:

The first image was taken on June 22; the pupa formed July 2; and the butterfly emerged on July 12, 2005