Butterflies

For Christmas, Grandma gave Kate a butterfly habitat with a coupon to mail into BugLore and receive several caterpillars. We waited anxiously for warmer weather, and we sent in the coupon a couple of months ago. About 3 weeks later, we got these little guys in the mail!

The above picture is day 3 after they moved in. At first they were completely motionless, and I thought they may have been eternally sleeping, but on day 2, they woke up and started to eat! (that yellowish stuff on the bottom is their food.)

After a week, they had quadrupled in size!! I couldn't believe how fast they grew! And I don't think anyone was more excited about it than me :)

Then one morning, one caterpillar climbed to the top of the jar and hung upside down. By the end of the day, every caterpillar in both jars followed suit.

It took that first one about an hour to form his chrysalis. It was SO COOL!

Once they had all gotten into their snuggies, we carefully transferred them to their habitat, where they were supposed to hang out for 7-10 days. As luck would have it, we were leaving out of town on day 10. I offered many inspirational and encouraging remarks to get them to come out before we left. But they did not. I found a well known butterfly sitter to watch them for us while we were gone, and sure enough, they all emerged just hours before we came home!

We kept them inside with us for almost 2 weeks to wait for the hail and snow to stop, and then we finally released them! 9 butterflies in all!

Hmmm... How do you get them out of there?

One by one, each found its way to the opening at the top and fluttered away. One even climbed onto Kate's finger!

Faith couldn't get one to climb onto her finger.

A couple butterflies (called Painted Ladies) found the flowers in our yard and hung out for a while.

Check out that proboscis!

The kids and I had so much fun during this whole process! Thank you Grandma!