In the spirit of purchasing and "educational" toy for the boys, Jesse and I decided it would be fun to order one of those butterfly gardens from TV - I know you have all seen the commercials! The caterpillars arrived April 6th.
They come very self-contained in this little plastic cup. The brown layer at the bottom is their food.
They just about doubled in size every day.
Just before they are ready to make their chrysalises, they climb to the top of the cup, and hang in this "J" position.
Once all the caterpillars are in the chrysalis stage you can remove the paper lining from on top of the cup and attach it on the inside of this butterfly garden net.
And in about a week you get a beautiful butterfly!
Now this may look very sciencey and cool - and it is, but bottom line I had bugs on my kitchen counter. Now, though not diagnosed, I am borderline OCD when it comes to cleaning. I will give credit to my mother on this one. I will concede that I believe one of my sisters has a more severe case than I. (You know who you are!) Nevertheless, this was difficult for me to endure. You are supposed to be able to release them once they are butterflies, with one small caveat - it must be 55 degrees outside (low temp). Now thanks to our good buddy "global warming", it has been nowhere near that for the almost two weeks that these bad boys have been hatched. I was all for this project when they were caterpillars hermetically sealed in that little cup with a food source, but butterflies need to eat. They must eat sugar water. (I am secretly laughing right now thinking about a scene from Men in Black.) Now I am sure that you can guess who must feed them right? Me. Yes. Me. Now go back to the OCD thing and imagine that I have to put my hand in a bug infested net filled with poop and gross stuff to feed the butterflies with an eye dropper. Which leads to an amusing tale...
On May 11th I opened the net to feed the little buggers and two of them escaped. So now I have two fugitive butterflies flying around my house. Now a little background . . . We have this broken window in our kitchen. Only the inside pane is broken, so needless to say it has not been a top priority to fix. This little bugger crawled in between the two panes of glass and all the way to the end. Now I have a toddler crying that the butterfly is going to die in the window, so I am forced to perform a rescue mission. I stuck a kabob skewer back there and got him out eventually. And caught the other in a cup. I am now counting the hours before I can kick out these house guests.
They just about doubled in size every day.
Just before they are ready to make their chrysalises, they climb to the top of the cup, and hang in this "J" position.
Once all the caterpillars are in the chrysalis stage you can remove the paper lining from on top of the cup and attach it on the inside of this butterfly garden net.And in about a week you get a beautiful butterfly!
Now this may look very sciencey and cool - and it is, but bottom line I had bugs on my kitchen counter. Now, though not diagnosed, I am borderline OCD when it comes to cleaning. I will give credit to my mother on this one. I will concede that I believe one of my sisters has a more severe case than I. (You know who you are!) Nevertheless, this was difficult for me to endure. You are supposed to be able to release them once they are butterflies, with one small caveat - it must be 55 degrees outside (low temp). Now thanks to our good buddy "global warming", it has been nowhere near that for the almost two weeks that these bad boys have been hatched. I was all for this project when they were caterpillars hermetically sealed in that little cup with a food source, but butterflies need to eat. They must eat sugar water. (I am secretly laughing right now thinking about a scene from Men in Black.) Now I am sure that you can guess who must feed them right? Me. Yes. Me. Now go back to the OCD thing and imagine that I have to put my hand in a bug infested net filled with poop and gross stuff to feed the butterflies with an eye dropper. Which leads to an amusing tale...
On May 11th I opened the net to feed the little buggers and two of them escaped. So now I have two fugitive butterflies flying around my house. Now a little background . . . We have this broken window in our kitchen. Only the inside pane is broken, so needless to say it has not been a top priority to fix. This little bugger crawled in between the two panes of glass and all the way to the end. Now I have a toddler crying that the butterfly is going to die in the window, so I am forced to perform a rescue mission. I stuck a kabob skewer back there and got him out eventually. And caught the other in a cup. I am now counting the hours before I can kick out these house guests.
And today is the day. It is finally warm enough, and since butterflies only live like three weeks, they needed to be set free.
We will miss you!
We will miss you!
Seriously so cool. Drew talked about the one that got out all day one day--- it must have been exciting.
ReplyDeleteWe all have mom to blame for our OCD, but I would hope that having bugs on the kitchen counter would slightly irritate most people. What a cool idea though. Picturing you rescuing the fugitive butterfly made me laugh so hard. Love it - and love those cute boys! Can't wait to see you all in just a few weeks!
ReplyDeleteum yeah- you are a better mom than me, that would officially gross me out, and yes i know i am more ocd than you...but not much. it is a cool idea tho- but i think ella would be more grossed out than me, so we probably wont have to worry about this!
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