The Butterfly

A few weeks ago, we found two caterpillars eating the leafy green carrot tops in our garden. So we put them in an open jar so the boys could see them. Dallin and Connor liked watching the caterpillars.

The next day, I went outside and found that one of the caterpillars found his way out, but the other one had made a chrysalis.

I guess we caught him at just the right time, eating his last big meal of carrot tops before metamorphosis.

Now this was turning into a fun little science lesson. Not only did we get to see the caterpillar, we would get to watch his whole life cycle.

Pretty cool!

We checked on our caterpillar every day for almost two weeks. One evening when I looked at the jar, the chrysalis looked brown and shriveled. I figured that meant he would be coming out soon. I showed Mckay, who pointed out to me that it was probably shriveled because there was a spider in the jar sucking the life out of him.

NOOO!!!

My conversation with the boys then changed from the life cycle to the Circle of Life: that some animals live so they can be eaten by other animals.

But the next day, I saw a butterfly sitting in the jar!

He survived the spider attack!

 Dallin was so excited to see our pet butterfly.

We let him out of the jar and he made his way to the grass.

I'm pretty sure this is a black swallowtail butterfly. The coloring looks right, plus the caterpillars are known for eating carrot leaves.

His left upper wing was a little crumpled, so he couldn't really fly.

He would just "jump" all over the yard.

I figured that since he was freshly hatched, he needed some time to stretch out his wings. We took advantage of his flightless state and gently held him.

The boys were smitten.

The day after our butterfly emerged, he was still in our yard. His wing was still crumpled, still not flying. I began to wonder if he injured his wing trying to climb out of the jar, or if it was the spider trying to eat him that hurt the wing. Feeling somewhat responsible for this poor creature's injury, I got a little dish of sugar water and some cut grapes to feed him.

The butterfly didn't really touch the food (that I saw) but I think he was warming up to us being around. He would walk onto our hands to let us gently move him away from danger (i.e. Connor).

Four days after he emerged from the jar, the butterfly was gone from our yard. I'm not sure what happened to him. I like to think he finally figured out how to work his wings, not that he was eaten by a bird or something.

Either way, it was a fun little experiment watching our hungry caterpillar turn into a beautiful butterfly.