Harbor Light Academy

• Sep. 19, 2007 - Emerging

A couple of weeks ago we were blessed with a gift of nature from our pastor's wife. She called and said she had quite a few caterpillars on her passion vines. She remembered her children loved to watch the whole process of caterpillar to butterfly so she thought my guys would enjoy it as well. She had a butterfly box that she has used in the past so we were all set to go. So we started out with 3 caterpillars. By the end of the first week 2 had spun into chrysalises. We still have one of the larger caterpillars left. You can see him in the background on the vine. We also have a small little guy that came in on some the vine we brought in to keep our big guys fed. This first caterpillar had hung himself from a leaf underside. Unfortunately one of the other caterpillars almost ate up his leaf so we rescued what was left and used a push pin to hold the leaf bit to the top of the box. The 2nd caterpillar was nice enough to attached himself to the box top so we don't have to worry about his leaf getting eaten. Hannah discovered our butterfly this morning minutes after it emerged because I had checked it less than an hour before and nothing appeared to be happening. By the time I got my camera his wings were already starting to straighten out although he is still sitting completely still. Hopefully the rain today won't interfer with him being released to the wild. We are in and out today so we will keep checking for the right time to release. This has been so much fun to watch and a big thank you goes out to our pastor's wife. Thank you so much for thinking of us.
Edited to add two new pictures -
Also I think I forgot to mention what type of butterfly we have. It is a Gulf Fritillary. Between errands today we noticed it was trying to fly around in the box so we took it outside. As it felt the breeze you could see it testing its wings. It finally flew out and landed on my (mom) shirt. I had the kids quick take the camera and get a shot of the butterfly on my shirt. After a few minutes the butterfly took off flying away free. Also Hannah was excited to discover yet another very little caterpillar so we must have had an egg hatch out that we didn't even know we had so we may have several more times to witness this great miracle. So current box count. 1- Big caterpillar, 1 - medium caterpillar, 1- small caterpillar, and 1 - chrysalis which should emerge in about 4 days or so.