Just a Quickie

Last year, Micah received a Live Butterfly Garden for his birthday from one of his classmates. We thought it was super cool but, because we suck massively, we missed our window for ordering our caterpillars during the warm weather and decided to wait until this year. We didn’t like to think of the little butterflies living their short lives trapped in the mesh covered tube. So a few weeks ago, I ordered the butterfly larvae (yeah, I think they’re just caterpillars…) and we set them up in said tube inside their little plastic cup of food. It was pretty cool to watch them eat and eat and eat for a week or so. It was even cooler to watch them attach themselves to the top of the cup and get ready for their change.

One little caterpillar couldn’t quite make it to the top and stayed on the bottom of the cup and cocooned. We pinned the little paper disk at the top of the cup to the wall of the mesh tube, and lay the little dud cocoon on the bottom. There’s still hope for him or her. The FAQ said so.

Earlier this evening, TJ says something like “Holy shit! I think one of them exploded!” Sure enough, I look into the tube and there’s what appears to be a splash of blood on the mesh and a little dried puddle on the wooden ledge we have their Butterfly Garden laying on. I look up from the blood looking stuff and see that one of the cocoons is empty. But we don’t see anything else. So I agree that, yes, one of them blew up! It was gross and I kept waiting for the others to pop and maybe get some of the gross spooge on me. But then, out of the corner of my eye, I see something move. It was a butterfly!! It didn’t explode and the blood wasn’t blood at all but just some left over cocoon stuff.

TJ made me charge up the video camera, just in case we happen to be lucky enough to see one of the others emerge. As soon as they’re all erupted and their wings are dried, we’ll let them fly on out and enjoy the outside.