Last Christmas Emily received a butterfly kit from Colby. The only problem with it was that the temperature outside had to be over 55 degrees for the butterflies to survive if set free. Well you know Cache Valley winters are definitely not 55 degrees they are more like 15 degrees. So we told Emily to put it away and we would do it in the Spring or Summer. Well, like all good things that are put in safe spots, we forgot about it. Then when we were cleaning out Emily's room to move her to her own room, we found the kit and decided now would be the best time to order the caterpillars for the kit. Fall would be coming soon along with lower temperatures so we needed to do it now. So we looked up Insect Lore's website and ordered a cup of caterpillars.
The cup arrived a few days later and there were five baby caterpillars inside. We watched them for a few days and realized that only one had survived the trip to our house through the mail. The company guaranteed at least three to live so we called them and they sent us a new cup for free a few weeks later. In the mean time, we watched this one little caterpillar crawl around, eat, and get really fat and big. Then one day we notice that he wasn't moving. We thought we had killed him too because we are not the best pet owners. Then we noticed that no he was not dead, he was forming into a chrysalis!! Once his chrysalis was formed, we moved him carefully from the cup to the butterfly cage. We waited and watched for about a week to see when he would become a butterfly. Finally our waiting was over and Buddy the Butterfly emerged from his cocoon! It was so cool to watch him flutter around in the cage and get stronger each day. We fed him watermelon slices from our garden and he loved it. Because butterflies cannot live forever in a cage, we had to let him go free. This was a fun experience for the kids.
Buddy crawled all over them. He flew away and they would chase him. Then he would crawl back onto their hands and shirts before flying away again.
We probably watched him for a good half hour as he fluttered around and then finally flew off to be free. Buddy was a good little pet butterfly.
A few days later, our new cup of caterpillars arrived and we started the process over again. This time, we were lucky and all five caterpillars survived the trip and grew. It was a very different experience watching five caterpillars grow compared to one. Buddy was a bachelor and lived a pretty easy life without competition. This was not the case for the five siblings living together in one little cup. These guys liked to crawl all over each other, fight over food areas, and would even crawl to the top of the cup and try to knock the other caterpillars down. They were pretty funny. Right before they all turned into Chrysalises, I thought they were going to run out of food or be over run by caterpillar poop. But then they turned and we put them into the butterfly cage. They each turned at different times so we were not sure when they would come out as butterflies. We watched them for another week and slowly, one by one, they came out of their cocoons. This time we had five butterflies fluttering around in the cage. We loved watching them. We were worried about these guys though because they did not seem to want to eat the watermelon we gave them. They must have eaten a little bit when we were not watching though because they did survive. We kept these guys in the cage for longer than Buddy because the temperatures outside were getting lower and it was raining a lot. Every time we told ourselves we would let them go the next day, it would be raining. Finally we had one good sunny day. Even though the temperatures were lower around 58, we decided to let them go. We worried that they would freeze at night because the temperatures were getting in the 30s at night. We had to let them go, however, because otherwise they would have died in the cage.
When we let these guys go, they did not stick around like Buddy did. As soon as we opened the cage, they were gone. We were able to hold a couple of them and chase them around but not for as long as Buddy. These guys were ready to be free and find their own way in the world.
These butterflies have been so fun to have and watch grow. I think this will become something we do every summer. The kids really enjoyed watching them change and grow.
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