Sunday, April 10, 2011

Metamorphosis

One of the coolest people ever gave Brodie one of the coolest presents ever for his birthday!
It all started one morning about 3 weeks ago when we got a call from our FedEx guy asking how the snow was on our road.  I told him the plows just went through so it should be fine and he said, It looks like you got bugs or something.  What???  He delivered the package and we opened our box that said "Live Insects" on it and found a small container of caterpillars!  This is what they looked like after about a week.  They were much smaller when we first got them.



We got 5 of them and Brodie loved checking on them every day.
Next it was time for the caterpillars to turn into pupas.  This part of the transformation is so cool!  They attach themselves to the top of the cup and it looks like their head pops off and they slowly turn into a cocoon looking thing.  I always thought they wrapped themselves up with their silk, but nope!  Their bodies just magically change!  Once they turned into pupas we had to take them out of the cup and put them in their butterfly habitat.


Can you see the little cocoons there at the top?


And this morning they hatched into butterflies!! We're still waiting for one more to turn into a butterfly, but he turned into a pupa a day later then the other four, so I'm sure he'll pop out tomorrow.



Brodie just loves them!  We were hoping we'd be able to release them into the wild, but it has to stay over 55 degrees, and that's still a no go around here, so we'll just enjoy them in their butterfly habitat.  They'll only live about a week anyways.

Thanks Marian!!  This has been so much fun!

2 comments:

Mrs. Hislop said...

Now I want one!

Lanenga Family said...

Brodie has such a cute smile! Glad he loves his butterflies!