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Wednesday, May 12, 2010

We have butterflies!!


A week ago, I wrote about our caterpillars. Well...now we have butterflies!

I am going to go through and post some of the pictures of our 'adventures in growing butterflies.' Haha!

This was so much fun for us. And when I say 'us'...I do mean me and Geoff, included. I am sure I enjoyed this in second grade....but as a twenty-nine year old....it was so interesting and amazing to watch this thing grown and morph.

OK....so this is the caterpillars the day we got them...


After just one day....you can tell it got noticeably bigger (Except for that little straggler you see near the top. But I'll talk about him more later.)

Then this was the next day after that....

Wowzer! This is the next day after that. Everyday I would repeat the book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, in my head...how he just kept eating....and eating....and eating.

And this is the next day. And here....we started getting really excited because he was going to the top...so we thought he'd be making his chrysalis soon.

The next day after that....still fatter....not a chrysalis yet.

Then they started 'hanging' themselves in this j-shape.

It was so amazing to see them in this shape one minute....and then....

....walk back by it, literally, 30 miuntes later and it look like this......

Remember that straggler I mentioned earlier in the post? Well....this one you see here in the front of this picture....that's him. All 4 of the other caterpillars had been in there chrysalis for over 24 hours when I took this picture. The instructions say once they all make it into the chrysalis...wait at least 24 hours before moving them to their net to ensure that they are securely attached. Well...this one just kept piddling around....

We thought he was a dud. That he wasn't going to make it. And we even considered setting him free.

But then he did it!!

All 5 chrysalides!

Geoff took the lid off one night and placed it in the net. We ended up doing this when Parker was already in bed. I had wanted for us to all do it together and take pictures....but on this day...I was in bed and sick all day long....so at that point...I didn't care about the pictures!! Just knew we needed to get them into the net before they completely morphed into butterflies!

And sure enough...less than 2 days later...on Saturday....we had butterflies!

This picture is not upside down....the butterfly was hanging. It's kind of hard to get pictures of their wings because they spend a lot of the time with them 'closed' (don't think that's the right word, but hopefully you know what I mean).

So now we have 4 butterflies...and we're just waiting on that straggler to become one, too. He's the very bottom chrysalis in this picture (slightly darker than the others). Well- actually...it's the only chrysalis in the picture because the other things are just the skeletons of the other butterflies' chrysalides.

After the last butterfly is 'born'...we'll probably just keep them for another day then release them into the backyard. The instructions say that as long as the temperature is greater than 50 degrees F...you should release them so that they can lay eggs elsewhere and continue to repopulate (but if you live somewhere where the temperature is not above 50 degrees F....the kit tells you to just let them live out their life in the net....so you can still do this, too!). The lifespan of a butterfly is about 2 to 4 weeks, in case you are wondering.

I still need to post the caterpillar and butterfly crafts we did in case you'd like to do this, too. I was going to include it in today's post, but this one is already so long...I will try to have them posted by tomorrow.

5 comments:

Jodie said...

What a neat experiment you all did!

Viv said...

Wow! Isn't all life just amazing? I know it sounds corny, but it is so true!

Audrey Sue's Mommy said...

How fun is that!!!

Megan said...

How awesome!! Love it!

Anonymous said...

I think I would have as much fun as ya'll did. You find and come up w/some great activities Marla!

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