Bye Bye Butterfly

So you think Mr. Phillips is the only scientist in our house.  Well, I'm here to tell you differently.  Santa has a rough time in our house choosing what to bring young Sebastian.  He has never, yep never, learned to play by himself.  So cars, Lego's, dinosaurs, skateboards, bikes, the list goes on really doesn't hold much value in his world unless Curt and I are there to play also.  Learned lesson with child 2 - let her play in corner by herself, she's FINE!

Anyway, Sab has a love of science.  So, Santa decided a bug habitat would be boyish, educational and time consuming.  My sister had one a few years back.  She missed her calling as a cruise director or camp counselor.  So you send away for the caterpillars after buying the habitat.  It occurred to me while in bed one night that I should mention to the post office that a box labeled bugs was coming through.  Sure enough this was on the box:

So they arrive and you think caterpillars - fuzzy, woolly, somewhat cute?  No these babies were little bitty wormy things - YUCK!  Once you have them for a few days, they crawl to the top of the shipping cup, hang upside and spin themselves into chrysalises - a big word I learned from my very bright niece (she was like 4 when she taught me :))

 After this stage they make their way into the big net.  This is their WASTE after the transfer:

Sick right?  I would never be a good home schooling mom.  The pig dissection or frog whatever - would send me over the edge.

Here they are Kate - in their chrysalises.  I thought of you a lot during this stage.

In this shot, they literally bust out of the brown yuck bags into beautiful butterflies.  This was like watching a bird hatch - I was fascinated.

 So a little known fact the life span after all this is only TWO WEEKS!  I couldn't bare to let them die in this net.  So after feeding them sugar water off of cotton balls, a trip to Sab's class for show and tell, a temp over 55 (today was in the 60's!) we let them go.

Here is Sab holding the habitat.  He said this was heart wrenching.  What words from a 6 year old - Jeepers.

Success!  Look how great this butterfly is!