Sunday, May 03, 2009

Guess What We Have... (Part Two)

Remember this? From Yesterday?
Well, after almost two weeks of being a Celtics fan, it did this:
Whoah! Sorry Celtics. Good Luck in the playoffs.
And then the next morning, I practically wouldn't leave it's side, because I knew it was going to be doing this:
It must have happened in like a second though, because I missed it.
No matter. The kids were still ecstatic.
And then it started doing this:

Slowly opening and closing it's wings. Actually it's a her. Sparkles is a she.
Eventually, after several hours, she began to flutter around the Costco salad box that she had called home, and we knew it was time to let her go. We took her outside, and opened the lid. She hung out for a while, and even put one leg on Evelynn's finger, before she fluttered off on her own. Sniff. Sniff.
Well, really I'm not sad about it. I am not a bug person. At. All. And do you have any idea how much caterpillars poop? Holy cow! I had to clean that thing out twice daily. I was so relieved when it finally made a chrysalis (apparently this is the new word for cocoon? I've never heard of this word. and apparently neither has eric carle. and he would know. he wrote a whole book about caterpillars. so there.). It was cool to observe the whole metamorphosis process (pronounced pro-sess, with a long "o"), and I'm really glad my kids got to have the experience, and... we'll just leave it at that.
Fare well Sparkles. Fare well. I thought we would see you again around the flowers outside, but you seem to have disappeared. Hopefully you didn't get eaten by a bird. The end.

*update: I just saw a post on my cousin's blog explaining the difference between cocoon and chrysallis. I guess it's the season for these things?

3 comments:

Heatherlyn said...

What a gorgeous butterfly! I think it is so cool that you captured that! So beautiful! And I'm relieved that eric carle hadn't heard the word either. So I'm not the only one who was like, "what? a new word for cocoon? OOOOOKKKKKK."

It really is amazing that they can turn from a catipilar into a butterfly.

Ashley said...

What a fun thing for your kids to see...and way to capture it on film! Beautiful!

Cal said...

I like german caterpillars like Heimlich, especially when he turns to a butterfly. Thanks for being bug tolerant for your kids (and our) sakes.