Well, Crawly moved into a bigger and more spacious accommodations. :) Timmy's speech therapist came to visit and heard the entire story about Crawly and happened to have one of these butterfly cages that has a nice wide zipper opening on top. I understand that they catch lots of butterflies, but it was vacant, so she brought it over for us to use.
Crawly also has roommates! We found another BIG caterpillar on the dill and he has been named Stripey (I know, real creative on the names) and then one of the ladies from our church had collected FIVE of them off of her dill. You can always tell who is a retired teacher - they always jump into the fun of a project. :) Unfortunately, 2 of the cocoons we received hatched into a gatorade bottle before I could get them into the bigger butterfly cage and their wings never spread out to dry. :( We put them out on the flowers, but I know they aren't going to make it very long. And then number 3 must have "hatched" (what is the term you use here, I am not sure) overnight last night, because we woke up to this beauty:
Isn't it beautiful?!?!?! Timmy and I will be doing some investigations to find out more about whether it is a boy or girl...our speech therapist said it had something to do with how much blue is in the wings.
Timmy was just fascinated.
I couldn't get a picture of him looking at the camera because he didn't want to take his eyes off of it in case it flew away! Here is a side shot:
So, three are "hatched" (one successfully), and 4 cocoons (including Crawly and Stripey) are still in the butterfly cage. I am sure we will have more updates as the week progresses!
So fun! We did the butterfly kit from Insect Lore last year, and this year we did ladybugs. Unfortunately, both were gifts for my girls' spring bdays, and I doubt the insects lasted very long once released since it was still so cold here : \ It's neat you're finding caterpillars midsummer to cage and watch grow!
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