During the last week of school Hyrum returned home with a little plastic cup with lid on it that had a caterpillar. It turned into a chrysalis soon thereafter. Mostly the little cup just sat in Hyrum's window. Abi got a hold of it once and tipped it on it's side, but there seemed to be no ill-effects to the cocoon. On June 21st the kids came running down stairs shouting with excitement that the butterfly had come out. Ethan was holding it on his finger. I can't remember what Corey and I were doing, but we were both otherwise occupied and just told the kids to be careful, it would probably be best to just leave it alone, no, we don't know what to feed it, just leave it alone guys, it's really fragile. The kids continued to play with their new pet and made it a home and had fun, asking me again if I could look up on the internet what to feed it. I told them that butterflies survive on their own in the outside world without any help from us humans, so just leave it alone, don't worry, it will know what to do. Well, I got around to looking at the little thing later that evening - upstairs I go to see their pet. The kids tell me it's not ready to go outside, it's wings still need to get straight. Hmm. I finally go to the computer and try to learn about these things. I google "How long butterfly wings to dry" and it says 1-3 hours - that little butterfly has been out all day, I think his wings are already dry, oh dear.
I search some more and learned that you are not supposed to touch a butterfly after it comes out of it's cocoon for 1-3 hours (and I start chastising the kids in my head - you stinkers! you messed it up! We said leave it alone!) because it needs to pump it's little wings and get the blood flowing in them to get them to straighten out - if you touch them, they'll get distracted and not pump their wings enough times and their wings will still be curled when they dry. Well, that's what happened to our poor little butterfly.
I told the kids the bad news... the butterfly can't fly (which we all could tell cause it tried and would just flap around like a busted moth) and the butterfly won't be able to fly because it's wings are already dry and you're not supposed to touch a butterfly after it comes out of it's cocoon yada yada I go on a rant telling them why can't they just relax and watch, why do you gotta touch everything, you messed it up. Ethan is very tender with animals as shown in this story, and I think he felt the most sorry about it, I tried to tell them that I know they didn't know not to touch it, sorry I never researched it for them, they didn't try to hurt it, they're just kids and are excited about stuff.
So what to do with this butterfly now?
Abi wouldn't leave it alone and it was starting to stress me out a little that I had another creature in my house to think about protecting and not letting it get killed. The kids expanded it's little house, we tried to feed it some lemonade, and I just felt bad for the little guy. We had a little lesson about how important it is for them, while they are young and fragile like little butterflies, to make sure that they made good choices and have good friends that will be good influences on them and won't (on purpose or unintentionally) mess them up and possibly ruin their lives. (Ethan, my clever teenager in a 9 year old's body, pipes up and says "You're saying that we're the bad friends!?") Nice analogy for young and impressionable minds, right? Not trying to scare them, but letting them know that they will know what to do in life if they look to that little light inside of themselves - they know what's right and what's true, just like the little butterfly knew it was supposed to pump it's wings. Be careful of outside influences so that they don't distract you and mess you up!
So that was the life lesson learned from our first butterfly.
The next day, even though we'd messed nature up, we decided to let nature take it's course and put the butterfly outside on a flower. The kids went to check on it later and couldn't find it, so it's either bird food or flapped under the flowers where they couldn't see it. We're all sure it's dead now and it's little spirit is flying with straightened wings in heaven. Now we have a chance to redeem ourselves with these new little caterpillars, and I'm keeping the kids away - this is not a hands on display! Do not touch! Got it?!
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