Caterpillars

Popa gave M a butterly hatching kit for his birthday, so we sent away for and recieved a little cup with 5 teeny caterpillars. They really were tiny, just like the one from the story and they ate through quite a significant amount of the food at the bottom of their cup and they made much mess and increased to quite a remarkable size.

Then one day, one of them decided to crysalise itself, very impressive, one minute it was hanging upside down, then it seemed within hours it was a hard crysalis, almost before our very eyes. Over the next two days the rest of them followed suit.

The instructions said to remove them from their cup and pin them to the lower part of the enclosure - which I did. A few of them freaked out and were waving themsleves all about. Finally the last one was calm and they have not made a move since.

Now we wait 7-10 days (today is day 3) for them to turn into painted lady butterflys, we can keep them for a few days and feed them sugar water, orange slices and water mellon - too easy. Then we can release them on a nice day, they aparently live all year all over North America, so we can release them at any time...fingers crossed that soon we can show a picture of our successfull brood.