Don't Hate Me Because I Raise Butterflies

WARNING:  This post is long and contains more info than you probably ever wanted to know about the life cycle of a Monarch butterfly.

First, let's backtrack to a few weeks ago when I overheard one of my favorite teachers at the boys' school talking about collecting milkweed plants to find caterpillar eggs to raise monarch butterflies.

Um, HELLO?!  Sign me up!!!

I've been tempted to buy one of those kits to send off for larvae and set up a habitat and blah, blah, blah.  So to find out we could do this all in our own little town was like the stuff that stay-at-home moms' dreams are made of. :)

So we packed a lunch, grabbed the neighbor girl (with permission, of course), and headed to the lake...

I'm not going to lie.  The kids had more fun skipping and picking flowers than collecting leaves with microscopic eggs. 

Can't really blame them.  It wasn't quite as magical as I had hoped either.

So we took a break for lunch...

These kids gobbled up the chicken salad on croissants like they had never eaten before. 

I love that!

I picked a bunch of milkweed and crossed my fingers that we scored some eggs.

Then we went for ice cream because, well, that just sounds like how you'd wrap up a fun day of butterfly egg hunting, right?

While the kids ate their ice cream I started poking around at the milkweed leaves.

Science Lesson #1: Monarch butterflies only lay their eggs on the underside of milkweed leaves.  One Monarch can lay 400 eggs, fluttering leaf to leaf, laying one egg at a time.  Milkweed provides the caterpillar its entire diet which makes it poisonous to other insects and birds.  Only 10% of the eggs will become butterflies.

Sure enough!!! 

We had some eggs and even two caterpillars! 

Phhew! 

I was worried we had only collected weeds.

The little guy above is only a day or so old.  Do you see it?  Just to the left of the hole it created.

Sorry, wish I would have used my nice camera to get better pics.

Science Lesson #2: Its first meal is eating the egg it hatched from.  Then it spends its days eating milkweed CONSTANTLY.  Over the course of several days it will shed its skin five times, also eating that.

It was really incredible to see this transformation...

And of course, with all that eating comes a lot of this...

Frass.

Known around these parts as caterpillar poop.

You cannot even imagine how much frass these little guys create.  Wow.

And don't you just love that word?  Frass.  Might have to keep that one in the vocabulary.

And then finally, after all that eating and pooping and growing, the caterpillar leaves the milkweed for the first time and climbs to the top of the container for its next stage of life.  This was really fun to see and unfortunately my pictures didn't turn out very good.  From my observations it looked like the caterpillar spit out (for lack of a better term) a silk-like substance from its mouth, then turned around putting its rear end up to the silky substance and dropped from that spot forming a J with its body.  This is the pupating stage. 

(Ok, I'm not calling that crummy description a a Science Lesson.  You'd think I'd do a little better research, but whatever.)

Here's the best shot I have...

This was taken at night, with no flash, while holding a flashlight with my left hand. 

Yep, I'm officially the Crazy Butterfly Lady.

Finally I busted out the good Canon and started taking better pics...

This is the pupa or chrysalis.

It stays in this phase for about two weeks.  Then just before its final metamorphosis into a butterfly, it gets darker and you can start to make out the wings...

Until POP!!!...

This photo was taken literally minutes after the previous ones.  I left the room to throw a load of laundry in and BAM!!!.  We had a butterfly.

It then hangs from its pupa until its wings are fully dry.

We slid a piece of fruit into the container and observed them for a bit...

Please excuse the vodka bottle in the background.  No, I wasn't boozing during the photo shoot.  This butterfly container was kept in the dining room by the bar. 

At least that's my story. :)

Notice the other pupas hanging in the back.  We started with a total of six caterpillars and four made it to "butterfly".  Not bad. 

Notice the dried pasta in this shot...

That was Luke's doing.  I guess he figured the butterfly would like pasta as much as he does?

Then it was time for the big release...

See it there?  Just left of center?

The kids loved it!  I probably loved it even more. 

I'm pretty sure I'll be 70 years old and still raising butterflies each year. 

I can see it now...  

The neighbor kids will call me the Crazy Butterfly Lady and I'll forgo the containers and have pupas hanging from the light fixtures. 

Ok, maybe not. 

I'm not that into frass. 

And based on my experience with talking to some of my friends about this, you either want to smack me right now for wasting the last ten minutes of your life or you're making a mental note to go out and collect milkweed next April. 

Which reminds me of an inside joke I have with, well,  myself.

Man, that sounds lame, eh?

Whenever I catch myself doing something totally dorky or a little out there, I bust out the old line from the 80's Pantene commercial, "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful."

Remember that one? 

It became a big joke.  A line people would say to make fun of themselves.

So mine tend to be things like, "Don't hate me because I cut cheese into the shape of flowers and pickles into leaves for an afternoon snack." and "Don't hate me because I then proceed to photograph them on a macro setting."

or...

"Don't hate me because I raise butterflies."

Hmmm...

Maybe I should have kept that inside joke inside?

I'm going to blame it on the muscle relaxers.

Until next time...

xo,
Jess