Day 13: We woke up to our very first butterfly! We’re not sure when it actually emerged, but we found it still hanging upside down from it’s chrysalis pumping up and drying out its wings.
Then, not an hour later, as we were checking on our lone butterfly, we noticed a second one fully emerged too (quick little thing!)
Gracen was over the moon and wanted to call Papa at work immediately to let him know her big news.
It’s really hard to take a decent photo through the blinding pink of our DIY butterfly hut, but these two were together all day. If one was at the top of the enclosure, then so was the other. And when one would move to a new spot, the other would follow. They’re fast friends. ☺
The best part, however, is the names Gracen gave them tonight. I really can’t tell you which is which, but one is named Dorkus and the other is Salmon. I’ve always said I like unique names. ☺
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With our butterfly enclosure ready and our first chrysalises ready to be hung, Miss G and I had to get a little creative this morning. When raising butterflies in my classroom, I used to hang the chrysalises from the inside of a wooden block that was open on two sides, but without one of those at our disposal, we decided to try and craft one. A box, some packaging tape, and a utility knife later, we had this. As you can see, it certainly ain’t pretty. Buuuut, it gets the job done.
Once the newly-formed chrysalises had been left alone for 12 – 24 hours, we very carefully lifted the lids off of the containers, gently loosening the webbing off of the container walls with a paintbrush if needed. Then we simply created tape rolls using a good strong masking tape, and stuck the lids to the ceiling of our homely box block. This is where they’ll hang now until the final step of their transformation takes place.
As for our other guys who are still busy eating, they all got a good container cleaning and fresh food. Let’s hope this is a welcomed change and not something that harms their ability to begin their transformation.
And while I was busy cutting, hanging, and cleaning, Miss G worked on her own project beside me. When she was done, she brought me her scrap cardboard and explained, “First we have fuzzy yittle caterpillars, and then they build their chrysalises. You wait for a long, long, loooooong time, and they POP out and be butterflies! Then the butterflies will fly, fly, fly away.” She never ceases to amaze me.
It’s day 4 with our caterpillars and look at what we have today! We woke up to find that three of our fuzzy little caterpillars had build their chrysalises over night. We were actually cleaning up from breakfast already when Gracen called out, “Some of the caterpillars built their chrysalises, Mama!”
And thank goodness. If they weren’t pupas today, I was going to go into their containers and do a major clean up. I know that school kits normally say that once the container is closed, leave it closed, and that handling them as little as possible is best, but it can’t be fun to live in your own poop. Besides, from what I read, serious butterfly raisers clean out caterpillar frass daily. For our 5 remaining caterpillars, it’s house cleaning day. Wish me luck!