Before Xmas, C and I were having a tough time with gift ideas for A. This usually happens because HAP has about a million people buying Xmas gifts for them every year between our 2 families. After a lot of searching, one gift we came up with was a "Grow Your Own Butterflies" kit. A is a very nurturing and motherly kid, and she loves animals, so this seemed like it would be right up her alley. We gave the kit to her on Xmas, but told her we would have to wait until spring to begin the project so we could release our grown butterflies in the wild, when the weather was warm enough for them to survive.
So, after several months of waiting, we were finally ready to mail-order our catapillers and start our butterfly project. It took 3 weeks for the catapillers to arrive, and A asked every day she saw us: "Are they here yet??" Her little catapillers arrived in a clear cup with a lid punched with air holes and a set of instructions. There were 5 catapillers in the cup and she promptly named all 5 and claimed to be able to tell them apart quite easily! She took them with her between our and her mom's house each night, keeping careful watch to see when they would turn into crysellis (sp?). Right on time, after about 7 days, the catapillers crawled to the top of the container and hung upside down from the lid and formed 5 crysellis. The instructions at this point say to carefully transport the lid of the cup (with the crysellis) into the larger butterfly mesh enclosure. The lid sslips into a sleeve at the top of the enclosure and you let the crysellis hang in there until they hatch. Well, A did this part of her own at her mom's house one evening, and accidently knocked all 5 crysellis off the lid. She then placed them by hand in the enclosure. Then, she had second thoughts, and placed the crysellis on little pillows she made out of tissues on the floor of the enclosure. (She wanted them to be on something soft - how cute is that?) It was about that time she realized that one of the crysellis was leaking some clear goo out one end...oh-oh. When she brings it to our house a couple of days later, we look at the directions and it says all over the place how you are not supposed to handle the crysellis, how they are very fragile, ect. So we park the butterfly enclosure at our house and keep our fingers crossed that maybe we'll get one butterfly.
After 2 weeks of watching and waiting and hearing A ask us every day: "Have you checked on my butterflies? Did anything happen?" C and I were trying to figure out the best way to tell A that maybe her 5 little catapillers weren't going to become butterflies. And then, miracle of miracles, last week as I leaving for work I happened to look at the cage and there were 2 butterflies in there!!! I was so excited and ran to get the kit instructions to see if I had to do anything once they hatched! Even better, when I got home from work, there were a total of 4 butterflies!! The only one that didn't hatch was the crysellis that was leaking... C and I were amazed and A is over the moon. She feeds the butterflies everyday and claims to recognize them all from their catapiller days. Too funny. I can't wait for next Xmas, I want to get her a tadpole kit to watch it turn into a frog!
1 comment:
Keith will be so excited to hear that one of his girlfriends grew butterflies too! He's been learning about those cocoon thingys at school (weren't they called cocoons when we were young?) and they had a butterfly growing doohickey there.
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