Butterfly Garden

Cora loves butterflies. I don't remember how it started, but they're one of her favorite things. So for Christmas her Aunt Tricia and family got her a Live Butterfly Garden, and as the weather got warmer, we sent away for our caterpillars.

It turned out to be fun for the whole family. I think Geoff and I enjoyed it as much as Cora did. They're like pets that don't destroy anything and you only have to keep them a few weeks.

So we got a small box via UPS marked "live insects" one spring day. It had what looked like a half-inch layer of peanut butter across the bottom and five black grains of rice inside. One of the FAQs in the pamphlet was "Are my caterpillars dead?" and we wondered the same thing. Within a couple days they started wriggling around, though, and then suddenly they were each the size of two grains of rice and they were crawling around their cup and eating their peanut-butter-looking food.

We needed to leave for Illinois for Easter, and they don't need any outside food or water during the caterpillar stage, so we put our cute little baby caterpillars in their little caterpillar nursery cup on the shelf and left.

They weren't kids when we got back! More like sumo wrestlers in a crack den! They were huge and they slobbed around their poop-filled cup for a week or so, I think. Nature ain't always pretty.



Eventually they all hung from the ceiling and formed their chrysalides as promised, and then you get to open the cup for the first time and take out the paper liner they're attached to and throw away the poop cup.

They went into their nice clean butterfly cage.

This guy didn't attach himself very well, so he got to gestate lying on a paper towel at the bottom of the cage.

Cora said, "I'll go get my magafine gyass." This didn't come with the caterpillars or anything--we got it from the dollar bin at Target. Our budding scientist knew what to do, though.



One morning as Geoff was getting ready for work and I was still in bed he told me one of the butterflies had emerged. I had hoped to see some of them emerge, but when I got up just a short time later, they were all out already. (Well, all but one, who emerged in the middle of the next night. Late bloomer.) One of the best parts of this project was that the whole family was interested and could watch and discuss their progress--even Geoff, despite working long hours.

Their wings were gray when folded, but when they spread them the colorful parts would show.

Here's Cora mixing up their food--1 teaspoon sugar dissolved in 1/3 cup water, soak a crumpled paper towel and leave it in the bottom of their cage. They did fly around the cage, but they didn't really try to escape when we swapped out the paper towels.

We enjoyed having them in our kitchen for a few weeks and kept them around long enough to show Grandma and Grandpa when they came to visit. Then Cora and Grandma and Grandpa had a little butterfly release party on the back patio.

We'll definitely order another batch of caterpillars in the future.