Butterflies!

Two weeks ago we were given a Butterfly Treehouse by a friend of ours. She had ordered it for her grandson, but it arrived too early and the larvae would die before he got there. So, we took it home and the girls were excited to watch the lifecycle of the butterflies.

The larvae had their own food stuff in a small cup and they would feed off that for several days before they went on to become butterflies. The girls took a close look at them and decided to name them (although I am not sure how they thought they were able to tell them apart). They called them Climber, Eater, Hanger, Small and Cat Deeley (caterpillar - cat - Cat Deeley, from So You Think You Can Dance). Anyway, we watched them grow, pretty much doubling their size each day.

After a few days the caterpillars crawled to the top of the cup and attached themselves and formed their chrysalises. The chrysalises were attached to a paper disc in the top of the lid of the cup and so we opened the cup and took out the paper disc and attached it to the mesh side of the Butterfly Treehouse.

And then we waited. And waited. And waited. For the girls seven to ten days is an eternity. One morning the girls woke up and were so excited that four of the butterflies had come out of their chrysalises. We put some flowers and a slice of orange on a plate with some sugar water sprinkled on top and we put it in the bottom of the enclosure. There was one more that hadn't come out yet and I was hoping to take a few pictures as it emerged, but in the five minutes it took to run to the post office and back, the last one came out of it's chrysalis.

We fed them for a few days and then today we released them. We figured they were anxious to go, as there were several of them that would flutter madly around the enclosure, but when we opened the enclosure we actually had to pretty much chase them out. They stopped long enough to perch on the girls fingers for a moment, but then they were gone. It was fun! Rebecca is already asking when we will be doing it again!

To see all the day by day photos of these butterflies CLICK HERE. .