Butterflies!

Our caterpillars sure did grow up fast! 

Truthfully, we ended up "rescuing" some larger ones from the parsley plant because the ones we had in our cage from eggs all died. 

This one just shed its skin and is eating it. 

The bigger they got, and the more they moved, the more interesting they became for the kids. 

I liked watching them at all hours too. 

Eventually, they wandered around the cage and found a place to hang. 

And form a chrysallis. 

I read that the green ones are more rare than the brown ones. Lucky for us, we ended up with one of each!

Nine days later, this guy came out of his green chrysallis. 

And flew away. See that tiny black speck on the cloud?

His former home, now an empty shell that resembled an alien space ship. 

The brown one is still in its chrysallis. We aren't sure if it's alive or dead, but we'll keep waiting for it to emerge. In the meantime...

Ellie spotted another mommy butterfly laying eggs on our parsley plant!

Here we go again!

Caterpillars

Our humble parsley plant has been growing for over two years, and twice now has it hosted black swallowtail butterfly offspring. Last year we discovered our caterpillar guests after one had the misfortune of getting cut in half as I chopped a bunch of parsley for dinner. We caught a couple of its surviving brothers, but then we made the mistake of feeding them non-organic parsley from the grocery store after our plant was picked bare. Oops. So no butterflies for us last year. 

This year, we are (hopefully) wiser because we learn from our mistakes and already luckier because we got to witness two butterflies (on separate occasions) lay their eggs on our plant. 

The only part that was more exciting than seeing these little mommies fluttering around was seeing and hearing my kids' expressions of awe and amazement as we watched them and then found their eggs nestled in the leaves and flowers. 

This was pretty cool too. 

We decided to try to raise some of the babies into butterflies again, so I cut a few branches that had eggs on them. About 3 or 4 days later, we found this:

Our first hatchling! Fresh from its egg! Eating it, in fact. The rest hatched, and they continue to grow. We added a few others from the parsley plant after Paul and the kids built a caterpillar habitat. 

We just stopped at Home Depot for supplies on our way home from Mass last Sunday, and our caterpillars have a pretty nifty home now!

I'll admit (and Paul teases me about this) that I am more excited and interested in the caterpillars than the kids are, but it is a really cool project! 

And the kids aren't totally indifferent. They like to "check on the caterpillars" with me, even if it's just an excuse to go outside for a while. 

"Wow!"

I hope to have exciting (or just living/growing caterpillar) updates next week!