On the same day, there were about 4 caterpillars crawling around on our sidewalk outside...I was tempted to capture them to see what kind of butterfly they turned into but my google search was turning up no results on capturing caterpillars and what they needed to eat, etc...because as you can see in the first picture, they had like this nasty looking sand super food...
Within about 5 days, the caterpillars became chrysalis:
About 6 days later Chris noticed that they had turned into butterflies...I was a little bummed to say the least...they felt somewhat like my babies since I'd been watching them grow and morph...I felt like I missed an important part of their life cycle! None the less, we now had 5 butterfly babies...
We gave them a soaked sugar water paper towel and some oranges (per the suggestions in the instructions) so they could have a decent meal after all that hard work (you might notice the blood in this picture on the netting...it was a lot worse than that but for sake of a decent picture, I left the majority of it out).
Releasing the butterflies:
One of the babies in their new home...we released them by a small pond/wooded area by our house.
Asher was unwilling to take a family picture but I got one of Ayris and Daddy:
Asher cooperating a bit more now that he was contained on Daddy's shoulders...
All in all it was a cool experience...not just for the kids...for us as well...Chris even commented one night about how he thought I was more interested in them than the kids (I was trying to watch the last caterpillar morph into the cocoon because I'd missed the other 4...it's like you'd walk out of the kitchen and another one would have turned already!)Now I'm thinking I might have to order the tadpoles so we can watch them turn into frogs!
What a neat experience! A lady from our church in Sarasota did this and brought the caterpillars to church for everyone to watch.
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