The Beutel Butterfly Nursery

I wrote in the vacation post that we ended up having our own little butterfly nursery in our house the last month or so.  One day while out looking at our garden, Max and Greg found some fat green caterpillars eating our dill plants.  They brought them in, put them in our old fishbowl, and gave them some 'food.'  I googled what kind of caterpillars like dill plants and the first picture that popped up was a black swallowtail butterfly caterpillar that looked exactly like what we had!  After we dumped out the random grass and leaves that the kids had gotten for them to eat and put in dill and parsley, we started watching the little critters.  They can eat like no other!

That tiny little brown thing in the center is what they first look like as caterpillars.  They actually shed their skin 3 or 4 times until they become the fat green and yellow striped ones we first found.

Of our three initial caterpillars, one escaped, one made a chrysalis on the bottom of the bowl and died (not sure what made it do that), and one attached to the side.  We were pretty excited to see that one!

Ta daa!  Greg woke up one morning and found this butterfly struggling to stay on the side of the fishbowl.  He was so excited that he woke up both me and the three big kids to see it!

We got it to climb onto this stick and it seemed to hold on MUCH better.

Eventually we moved it outside because after watching it sit in a chrysalis for 10 days, we didn't really want it to die in our house once it was able to fly!

The kids liked watching it, but it was very cool outside this morning so they didn't sit for too long.  Not to mention that it took about 4.5 hours for it to finally fly away!  (Sidenote:  Mom Rassi actually got to see it fly away, as she came and helped me freeze blueberries that morning and then stayed with the kids so Greg and I could go to Morton and sign the contract to buy our new house!)

Also, remember the caterpillar that got away?  I looked all over the pie safe that the fish bowl was sitting on and could never find it.  I figured we'd eventually find a shriveled up caterpillar once we moved.  Well, later the same day as the first butterfly emerged, I happened to glance down at the kitchen floor and see something big and black!  Once I calmed down and looked again, it was a butterfly!  It fluttered around the house just a bit and then I got it to rest on my finger so I could get it outside.  A couple of weeks ago as we were cleaning to get our house ready to show, I moved the pie safe to sweep behind it and what did I see hanging off the back?  A dried up chrysalis!  The whole thing just made me laugh.

Not to worry, though...we still had more caterpillars to watch!  Tirzah liked them, as you can see.

Three more, eating their way to the chrysalis stage!  At this point, we already had one ready to make its chrysalis so we had put it in a separate container so it wouldn't be disturbed by me cleaning out the bug box.  I just realized that I don't have a single picture of that one, but it did emerge as a butterfly and get safely released.

It was kind of entertaining to watch them eat.  They'd get up on top of a spike of dill and just munch it down, Bugs Bunny style.

This caterpillar made its chrysalis 2 days before the other two, so I was keeping a close eye on it.

So pretty!  I just never got tired of looking at them!

Nora, my helper, carried the stick with the butterfly outside.  I think she thought it was pretty cool to be holding a butterfly!

My butterfly princess!

Loving the pretty butterfly!

This picture is my absolute favorite...the gorgeous butterfly and the cute little hands holding the stick in the background.

Amazing.  How can you see this whole process and not think how awesome God is?

When the butterfly was ready to emerge, you could see its spots through the chrysalis if you looked hard enough.  This was the morning that the last two butterflies came out.

The last two!

That one on the left couldn't decide which side of the bug box to be on...it started here, then crawled (dragging its wings along) over to the right side (pictured above), and then crawled back over to the left!  I was afraid its wings were going to get damaged!

All in all, I think we had a total of 9 caterpillars and 7 successful chrysalis/butterfly transformations.  Oh, and one other thing I didn't know until now:  the caterpillar actually spins/makes its chrysalis UNDER its skin.  When it's ready, the skin sheds one last time and you see the chrysalis.  Cool, huh?  It's just mind boggling to see those little brown caterpillars become big fat green caterpillars and then curl up and make a chrysalis and then just 10 days later come out completely changed into a gorgeous butterfly.  It just shows how creative an artist God really is!  I'm kind of glad not to have any more little critters to be taking care of since we move in two weeks, but I think that next summer we will definitely plant some dill in our garden! :)