Olivia and her homeschool co-op visited the All-A-Flutter Butterfly Farm about a month ago and brought home a "butterfly castle", which is a potted milkweed plant with 2 Monarch Butterfly eggs.
We checked it daily, watered the plant and waited for a sign that at least one of them had hatched. Finally, after a week, we were rewarded with this:
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| Not one, but both of them hatched within a day of each other. Olivia promptly named them "Jane" and "Millie" |
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| They grew quickly, going from tiny caterpillars to large, fat ones over the course of the next 12 days. |
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| Then, on day 19, Jane (don't ask me how she could tell them apart) curled up and hung motionless for a few hours |
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| When we looked the next morning, she was shedding her skin. |
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| Before this, I always thought they wove a cocoon around themselves |
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| But as we watched, it became clear that she had already changed inside and would become the chrysalis itself. |
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| Another 12 days later, we came downstairs and found her already out of the chrysalis, drying her wings. |
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| We carried the plant outside and took off the net. |
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Almost immediately, she fluttered down to the concrete. That's when we noticed that "Jane" was actually a boy.
Olivia promptly renamed him Benny. |
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| I guess Benny wasn't used to his new wings yet because he wouldn't really attempt to fly and was willing to climb onto our hands without the slightest hesitation. |
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| After a couple more minutes of prompting, Benny took flight. He didn't go far, though, before he landed in the grass and struggled to get upright. I picked him back up and looked for a place to put him. |
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| In the meantime, Ezra went back and forth about whether he wanted to hold Benny, but he finally did. |
We finally placed Benny on top of a tall, wooden stake in the yard and he sat there for a good hour while the kids ate lunch. At some point, I looked out the window and he was gone. Now we wait for Millie...
