NEW YORK—Immediately after she clinched the 2,383 delegates needed to secure the Democratic presidential nomination Monday night, campaign aides announced that Hillary Clinton had retreated to a dark corner of her Brooklyn headquarters and entered the beginning of a 16-week incubation period.

Top-level staffers confirmed that the lengthy gestation phase, during which the former secretary of state will undergo significant physical and political changes while encased upside down in a gray-brown, 7-foot-tall chrysalis, will prepare the candidate for the difficult and protracted general election cycle ahead. Officials added that once Clinton has completed her transformation into her mature, final-stage form, she will wriggle free from her cocoon and return to the campaign trail.

“As soon as we informed Hillary that she had reached the number of delegates necessary to secure the Democratic nomination, she thanked the staff and then promptly began secreting a thick, resinous substance from her oral gland and fashioning it into a protective casing around herself,” said Hillary for America communications director Jennifer Palmieri, explaining to the press that Clinton has been eating several times her body weight daily while campaigning in preparation for the energy-intensive hibernation and metamorphosis process. “She completed her encasement several hours ago and is now pupating comfortably inside. As we speak, Hillary is rapidly altering, developing an entirely new anatomy and a complex vision for a united, prosperous America that works to lift up each and every one of us.”

“You can rest assured that once Hillary uses her powerful mandibles to chew her way out of the cocoon, she will emerge stronger than ever and ready to take on Donald Trump,” Palmieri added.