For Christmas last year, The Littlest Briston received a butterfly cage from her grandmother. It was supposed to come with a coupon you could mail in to receive a couple of caterpillars which you could then raise for a few weeks until they became butterflies. Unfortunately, it arrived sans coupon.
We were visiting TLB’s grandmother last week when she had us all look on a dill plant she had growing outside. There, we found a pair of beautiful Swallowtail caterpillars. We snipped plenty of the plant and brought the two of them back to put in their new home.
I’ve been updating my facebook with the progress Penguin and Unicorn (why yes, a four-year-old did name them…how did you guess?) have been making. Follow along!
Try calling the company. This happened to my nephew … he got one for his birthday that had probably been purchased, opened, divested of its coupon, and returned. My sister in law called and the company sent them some for free!
Very cool. Sometimes it’s better to get the caterpillars from nature like this than from the company. I’ve heard that some of the Monarch farms in Florida send out a lot of diseased caterpillars unfortunately.
Tell me about it. I’m barely wrapping my head around the idea of her not being in diapers, yet five minutes ago she walked into my office and said “Daddy? There’s something I need to discuss with you”.
You wanna discuss something? How about we discuss you not growing any more!?!
And thanks, Avarie – I had considered that when I saw there was no coupon, and immediately filed it in my “Things I’d like to think I’ll get to, but I know damn well I won’t” list. Anyway, TLB didn’t even care that there were no caterpillars at the time. She just looked at the cage as a fun toy on its own.
While the first one took nine days in the cocoon to make the big switch, the second one took quite a bit longer. Like, to the point where we were quite sure it was dead, and we just stuck the stick in the ground outside. 32 days after entering, the second one gave us all a very big surprise by making an appearance today.
Wow, black swallowtails. I used to raise them, and others, when I was a kid. The best and the worst were praying mantises. Best, when an egg sack hatched, and the entire house was full of a bazillion hungry baby mantises. Worst, when the adults had sex, and the female chomped off the male’s head.
I’m getting old.
