Butterflies

 

We have some monarchs again this year. My friend Mary finds them in her yard - she's got a lot of milkweed. She gave us 8 caterpillars, then we found another baby one on the milkweed that we picked up to feed the other 8 hungry hungry caterpillars. So we had 9. One of them we let go outside when he was about to j-hook, so then we were back to 8. Then one of the big guys knocked off or ate the tiny one I think, cause one morning we couldn't find him - down to 7. One of the caterpillars got stepped on when he was in his wandering stage cause he got on a stool. Down to 6. 6 of them hooked, then the first one to come out was on Thursday, and he turned black and we could see the wings, but he never emerged. The chrysalis was cracked and we kept waiting, finally the next day I figured he was dead but wasn't sure, so I tried to open it - found out he was still alive inside but for some reason the poor guy wasn't able to push his way out of the chrysalis. But since it had cracked open his wings had dried up inside while they were all small. It was so sad, we felt so bad for him, but obviously he wouldn't survive, so I took him outside and sent him to fly in heaven (I squished him after an "I'm sorry" prayer).  So at our peak we had 9 and now 4 were dead. Hopefully these next 5 all survive. 

We watched the two black ones above come out this morning, so amazing.

The kids had fun with them. One of them was anxious to get on with his life and flew off high in a tree The other one stuck around for a while so we took lots of pictures. They named him Brian -

 

So amazing. It makes it worth putting up with all the frass (aka caterpillar poop) when they finally emerge. Love it.  I think the other 3 will be coming out tomorrow if anyone wants to come by. :)