The Butterflies & Their Great Release

On Day 11, we had emerging butterflies in our little nature adventure. Four out of the five made it out okay, but we did have one fatality.


We saw the one on the top left trying (being the key word) to crawl out of its cocoon. The others were much quicker about it and we didn't have the time to watch them emerge one by one. You can probably tell the coloring of the one I mentioned is much darker than the others. I believe it had problems from the beginning. For those of you wondering, the mother in me did kick in and I tried to save it by helping open the cocoon with a couple pair of tweezers. However, the chicken in me came out when I realized I had no idea what I was doing and that I could possible pull wings off or it could release quickly and come flying at me! My philosophy: 4 out of 5 ain't bad. (In case you are wondering, the "red" non-bloody substance is something they secrete while releasing from the cocoon.)


The butterflies were a little crinkly when the came out (as you can kind of tell in this photo). Within 5 minutes or so, the looked perfectly normal.


The white thing you see on the right is a scrunched up piece of tissue with sugar-water on it. The instructions said the butterflies prefer carnations but tissue will work. Um, I don't get flowers, even cheap carnations. There's no way I'm buying flowers for a temporal insect. (Not that I didn't look for a floral arrangement at the store that happened to have a few carnations in it. We can all suffer for the cause within reason.)

It was difficult to get a good photo of a butterfly with its wings open. You've probably noticed that the outside of the wing is very neutral colored. The inside was beautiful. My shutter wasn't fast enough to catch the inside but this once. I even set it on continual shots and didn't get a good pic.

Just hangin out -- I just want to say "the 3 amigos" when I see this photo.

Momma got tired of feeding the butterflies and them taking up space on my counter, so it was time for them to go , um, I mean time for them to be released into their natural habitat. Besides one of them (who we affectionately named "Flippy" because he was spastic and was flipping out all the time) was begging to be released. I'm pretty sure he was the one that escaped when I opened the top the slightest bit to take a few pictures before we let them go.

Each of the girls were able to hold a butterfly for a couple minutes before they flew away.

Madi's little friend stuck around for quite a while. She'd put it on a plant for a little while and come back to play some more. It made her day. I think that one was rather docile and may have not been healthy. The next morning she found him on the plants where we had put it the day before. Not sure if it was too cold or if something was wrong with it. She brought it in and wanted to hang it up in her room! We did press it in some waxed paper. I'm trying to find a clear box or a biology display to put it in. Anyone know what I'm talking about and know where to get one?

This picture cracks me up -- what you can't see is our cat coming closer and closer to Madi. One day while the butterflies were still in their garden, I placed it outside to give them fresh air (and to get them off my counter). The cat came up on the back porch and was batting at the butterflies. Madi looks petrified that Patches was going to jump up and try to get her butterfly. I asked Makenna to put Patches in the shed until the butterflies all flew away. Another tragedy averted!