Fantastic Confabulations: Life Cycles ~ Butterfly 2010

Josiah became mesmerized by caterpillars in the Summer of 2009, noticing one on our front porch as we were leaving one day. My first discussion with him was how delicate they are, and how we should handle them first of all, infrequently, and when we do handle them, gently. Sometimes Josiah “loves” too hard ;)

From then on, every trail we walked, every tree we passed, he searched high and low hoping that he would be lucky enough to spy a caterpillar, and when he did, especially when it was one we had never found before, it was one special moment! We observed for awhile, took a picture, then placed the caterpillar back in a “safe” spot. With all of these caterpillar sightings came all types of questions, so I ordered a beautiful Caterpillar Field Guide, Caterpillars of Eastern North America: A Guide to Identification and Natural History, popping with color, from Amazon. For many nights after we received the book, Josiah and I cuddled in bed together as he sifted through the pages asking a million questions.

Of course, all of this led us to the Life Cycle of a butterfly, as well as an interest in moths. I ordered a Butterfly tent and sent the coupon in for our Painted Lady larvae. The larvae grew quickly, moved to the top of the jars and hung, to turn into beautiful, iridescent chrysalids. We were then able to open the jars, remove the chrysalids, and pin them to the inside walls of our Butterfly tent.

Larvae

Chrysalids

The Butterfly Bungalow

Getting a Close Look at the Chrysalids

Discovering that a Painted Lady had emerged from the Chrysalids was amazing! We were very curious about the red liquid we found that looks like blood. It is actually called meconium, the left-over color and unneeded tissues from the butterfly's wing and body transformation.