Our Butterfly Experience

For Christmas, the girls got a butterfly pavilion. It didn't, however come with butterflies...it came with a card that you can send off to receive little worms.

A few weeks ago we sent off for our worms and we got two containers of worms with 5 each. The little worms were only 1/4 inch long or so. Over the course of a week or two they all grew to be beautiful furry caterpillars about 1 inch long and then they climbed to the top of their containers and hung upside-down and covered themselves with an iridescent chrysalis each. This was so exciting to the girls every day! We watched as each little caterpillar turned into a chrysalis until they had all completed the task.

We removed them from their containers (following the instructions in our butterfly pavilion) and hung them into the pavilion to allow them to complete their transformation into butterflies.
After a week or two butterflies began showing up in our pavilion. Over the course of a week, they had all emerged from their chrysalises. When all was said and done, we had 8 butterflies! Six of them were very strong and after observing them for a few days we released them and they flew away. However, 2 butterflies didn't have very strong wings so we kept them and fed them flowers from our yard for the rest of their lives. I'm not doing justice to how cool this experience was, but it was an amazing experience for A & E to watch the transformation over the past few weeks. Attalie learned all kinds of interesting facts about butterflies. She couldn't believe that just a day or two after they emerge from their chrysalis, they mate and lay eggs. She said the butterflies must be like, "hey friend, I know we just met yesterday, but do you want to start a family with me?" Haha! Eva liked feeding them...and pestering them. I liked them because they required very little maintenance and they were a short-term pet.