Our Own Butterflies!

For Parker's birthday my parent's gave him this awesome butterfly garden.  It comes with a certificate to order a jar of five Painted Ladies caterpillar larvae.  (We can buy more at any time for $5.)  As soon as we came home from our vacation to Las Vegas we ordered them.  Parker and Jason we fascinated watching the little centimeter length caterpillars slowly move around the jar.  Everything the caterpillars need is inside the jar.

 It took ten days from the day they came for the caterpillars to grow to about 1 1/2 inches when each creates it's own chrysalis.  The caterpillars practice spinning silk, so more and more of it decorates the jar as they grow.

 All of us were interested in the caterpillars development, but Parker would run down to the kitchen every morning to check on them first thing.

You can see in the final of the four photos above that some of the caterpillars are hanging upside down in a J shape.  They hang like that all day.  They're perfectly still and it looks like their resting, but actually they're spinning their whole chrysalis sac.  After they've made the whole thing, they wriggle and slide it up until it covers nearly their whole bodies.  The very end of their tails falls off.  After a few hours the chrysalis hardens into it's typical shape.

Here is a few minutes of video clips we took starting when one of the caterpillars is sliding into it's chrysalis.  Our caterpillars were in the chrysalis stage for 9-10 days.  Then the video shows one emerging.  After they emerge the butterfly pumps blood into it's wings and within two hours it can fly.  It oozes this orange-reddish stuff that looks like blood.  It's actually the left-over color from it's wing formation.  Then there is a video of Liesel blowing the butterflies kisses.  Most of the time the butterflies are pretty mellow.  They sit still for long periods of time or slowly open and close their wings.  Every once in a while they fly around hectically.  You can see parts of both of those on the video too. 

After the chrysalis formation, we moved them into the butterfly garden netting.  Three were attatched to teh paper on the top, which we pinned to the top of the enclosure.  Two of the butterflies chrysalises were on the base of the jar.  The instructions advised us to place them on a napkin inside the enclosure.  We did and they survived just fine.

After the butterflies emerged, we put sugar water on carnations and put them inside the enclosure.  We add more sugar water regularly, which Parker loves to do. 

So fun to watch! 

 Here you can see the butterflies on the bottom side of their wings.  They are pretty neutral so they could blend in on a tree or in the dirt. 

 This photo doesn't do them justice, but when the wings are open. you can see the bright colors.  They have the bright orange coloring of a Monarch butterfly.

Painted Lady butterflies only live for 2-4 weeks as butterflies.  We have the option of releasing them outside or watching them in their enclosure.  It's starting to get warm enough, but even if was I'm not sure Parker is ready to part with them.  He's hoping that they'll lay eggs and we can start the whole process over.  We'll have to wait and see.  It's certainly been interesting and I'd recommend it.