Finding Nemo

Another first has happened in our grand Monarch menagerie...we finally saw one of our butterflies come out of his cocoon and I've got the pictures to prove it. We knew the butterfly would come out at some point today because the cocoon was transparent, so we were on the lookout. Chase sat right next to the aquarium to do his math work and keep watch. After a while we noticed the cocoon had split and as I looked closer I realized he was pushing his way out. I called the girls and here's what we saw. (Please excuse the dirty aquarium. The spots are from all the misting we did to keep the humidity in the tank.)

Look at the perfect tear-drop shaped opening.



It's hard to tell from the picture, but the butterfly is making it's way out. It only took about 2 minutes. It looked like this and then...



...he was out. It was one smooth motion.



No wiggling, no jiggling. Just swoosh and he was free.






Now when he first came out his wings were very small and wrinkly. I wondered if something had gone wrong because we'd seen butterflies with deformed wings and they don't live very long. One wing in particular looked like it hadn't formed correctly and when I pointed this out Chase proclaimed, "Lucky fin!" If you've seen the movie Finding Nemo you know exactly what he's talking about. So right then we named him Nemo.



Nemo was having a bit of trouble getting himself in the right position to hang and dry his wings and we wanted to make sure he had a good chance at getting those wings just perfect, so Chase got Nemo onto his finger. Look at the little "grippers" at the end of his legs. Those are called tarsi. He can really hang on tight with those babies.



Then we placed him on a stick and situated him so he'd have plenty of space.



Within several minutes Nemo's wings were perfectly straight and looking strong. He's doing great now.



He'll just hang around all day and sometime tomorrow he'll decide to eat. We'll give him some watermelon and if the weather's nice we'll take him to grandma's butterfly bush and set him free.

Fabio has Emerged!

Just 2 days ago, on a chilly September morning, our first caterpillar was reborn into a beautiful Monarch butterfly. We were so excited Tuesday morning when we awoke to see that the cocoon had turned transparent and the black, orange, and yellow fabric of Fabio was clearly visible. We waited with great anticipation, hoping to see the miracle of his rebirth.

For about 2 hours we constantly checked on Fabio. Here you can see Chase peering through the glass. This is homeschooling at it's best.


Fabio was clearly ready to emerge, but we had to be patient. Breaking loose of the confines of a cocoon is no easy task.


Look at the details. Fabio's face is smooshed down in the bottom and he's looking a bit precarious.


If you look closely at this picture, you will see that the cocoon has split. He remained this way for probably another 30 minutes. It seemed as if he still had a good amount of work to do, so I decided to jump in the shower.


When I returned, Fabio was totally out of the cocoon and flopping around on the bottom of the aquarium. A butterfly must hang upside down immediately after escaping the cocoon or death is almost certain. The wings are wrinkled and wet and they need to hang upside down in order for the wings to dry properly. Fortunately I was there to pick up our poor baby.


Notice the wings appear a bit floppy. We continued to hold him upside down.


Now you can see that his wings no longer look wrinkled or wet. This only took about 5 minutes which would explain the importance of being present when your butterflies emerge.


We gently nudged Fabio onto a stick to complete the drying process. Can you see his curly little "tongue"?


Isn't he beautiful? We're just so proud.


Fabio won't eat for the first 24 hours, so we had fun observing him all day. Then the next day we gave him a piece of watermelon. Check out his curly proboscis or "tongue".


He'll use that proboscis to suck up nectar and water.


What a beauty, eh? Amazing! Fabio is 2 days old now and later today we will take him to my folks house because my mom has a butterfly bush. He'll love it there.


As I write, we are waiting for our second butterfly to emerge which should be anytime now. Unfortunately she will not get the attention of our firstborn, (isn't that the way it always is?) because I am sitting in a coffee shop waiting for punk #2 to get her braces on. I left Amarillo in the capable hands of punk #3 who is supposed to call with news of Amarillo's arrival. And as is to be expected of any second born, poor Amarillo will not have pictures taken of her miraculous birth. Figures. (Can you tell I'm a second born?)

Oh and btw, some of the pictures are dimly lit because Fabio jumped anytime I used my flash and I didn't want to stress him. I like using natural light whenever possible, but in this case the room was fairly dim and even though we used a desk lamp, pictures taken in the evening just didn't have the best lighting. I need to solve this dilemma for Amarillo's photos.

Fabio has left the building. Here are some shots of our brave little Fabio encountering the great outdoors for the very first time as a brand new butterfly. I think Chase had a small dose of what it feels like to be a parent as he opened the jar and let his butterfly go free. He made statements like, "Do birds eat butterflies?", "What if he doesn't know how to fly yet?", "Maybe we should just keep him at home." Ahh...the joys of parenting.



Fabio knew just what to do when Chase placed him on the butterfly bush. His little tongue went straight to the sweet nectar and he took a big swig.



I think he looks quite happy.




Amarilla Makes Her Debut!

Not long after returning from saying goodbye to Fabio, Amarillo decided to come out of her cocoon. I had begun to get a bit worried when she didn't come out this morning, but she was fine and of course, she came out while I was helping one of the kids with their homework so we missed it again. I wish we could just sit and wait, but she looked ready to emerge at 8:00 this morning and didn't finally come out until about 3:00. I can't just sit around and wait for you crazy winged creatures....I've got things to do! The least you could do is give us some warning, but no, one minute you're in, the next you're out. Well, we have 2 more to go so maybe we'll get to see one emerge yet.

And here she is out of her cocoon and hanging just as she should be. Unlike Fabio who fell down, Amarilla clung to her old home for quite some time. You can see one of the other cocoons nearby.





Also unlike Fabio, Amarilla was quite active after hanging for less than an hour. She began to explore her surroundings. I think she's a bit spunkier than Fabio. Interesting to think that butterflies have personalities isn't it?



So there's another one of our beauties. And as should be expected, that's all the pictures we have of our poor neglected second born.

Bean Night

Random title, random thoughts. The title isn't as random as it may seem at first glance. This evening was full of beans; refried beans with our tacos, some sort of card game that had to do with the planting and harvesting of beans, and then me partaking of way too many coffee beans. Here's the story.

Tonight I can't sleep due to unwisely drinking a cup of coffee offered to me at my friend Jill's house while playing a game of Ticket to Ride with some great friends at or near the time of 8:00p.m-ish. I mistakenly believed the brew to be decaf. because who in their right mind would serve regular coffee at such a late hour? I blame KD, Jill's husband who must have some sort of caffeine immunity built up in his system. So here I am at 3:44 a.m. wide awake and wondering if the kids will be kind enough to keep the noise level to a minimum so I can sleep through the morning, which I NEVER do and a behavior which I loathe entirely.

Here's a funny random Chase quote of the day, "Hey, when I shake my whole body I can feel liquid moving around in my stomach." I believe he had just had a large glass of water. I watched as he spent the next minute "air" hula hooping and listening and laughing at the sound a belly full of liquid makes when it's shaken...not stirred.

Another funny and quite random scenario from our motley crew that took place today while riding in the car goes as follows:

It began with Chase asking,"Mom, what is a hypocrite?"
I explained that it referred to someone who says one thing, but does the opposite. To which Jodie quickly added, "Like if you told someone not to spit, but then you spit all the time." (to clarify...Chase is a spitter, he's 10...it's what 10 year old boys do and it drives Jodie bonkers.) I also added some other profound examples of hypocrites hoping to make this a teachable moment.
Then Jodie added, "And by the way, that was really a random question to ask."
"Yea that was random, Chase", I interjected. "What made you ask that question?"
"I was thinking about Harry Potter", he said.
Which made no sense to any of us except Jayme who has read all the books and has a mind like a steel trap. And so she responded,"Oh, so you were thinking about the hippogriff."
"Yea", Chase said.
And we all had a good laugh because we had a very serious 10 minute discourse on the topic of hypocrites, when all the poor kid wanted was an explanation of a creature who's body is half horse and half eagle.

Speaking of random, I worked out today for the third time this week. My friend Jill and I are regularly going to the field house and lifting weights as well as doing the eliptical and the stationary bike. I hope to keep this up so that I might fulfill my dream of having a 6 pack...at this point I think I have a 2 liter.

More randomness; I'm reading a good book about a mother who home schooled her daughter for a year. So far it is fascinating and refreshing and confirming. I have had some anxiety about whether my decision to home school my kids for a year is a good one and this book is helping me to see the light and chill out. I am really looking forward to the experience and believe it will be one that my kids will never forget. (Hopefully in the good sense of the meaning of that phrase.)

Even more randomness: today is the first day that it really felt like fall is on it's way. I love fall, it is my favorite season. The kids and I went to Michael's and they spent their own money on crafts and they all chose something fallish...well, except for Jayme who chose these cool bobble heads made from Puffy Clay which will be a hoot to create and since I just used the word "hoot" I believe I can now say that even her craft is fallish...being that owls hoot and sometimes that's scary which makes me think of Halloween and Halloween is in the fall. There it came full circle.

Well that's about enough randomness for one night/early morning so I will now sign off.

Somewhere a dog barked....

The Changling

It's monarch caterpillar season and we all know what that means, right? Time for the Chili's to go on their 4th annual monarch caterpillar hunt! This is the 4th year that we have helped keep the monarch butterfly population going strong by capturing said caterpillars and raising them to become responsible adult monarch butterflies.

The monarch butterfly population, among many others, is dwindling due to urbanization and so by capturing the caterpillars we are increasing the chances that they will make it into adulthood by providing a stable and safe environment away from predators. We didn't know that when we began this project 4 years ago, we just liked bugs and wanted to watch them go through all the cool changes. But knowing that we are contributing to the betterment of the monarch butterfly population is definitely an added bonus.

And so our adventure begins on the Falling Waters Trail just a couple of miles from our house.


We had ventured less than 50 yards down the trail when we spotted some milkweed plants.




Believe it or not, these little yellow and black striped buggers are hard to spot.


You have to really get in there and look all over the plant, especially under the leaves. They typically stay on the underside of the leaf in order to avoid getting eaten by ravenous birds. (Notice the nerf dart stuck to Chase's shorts. Obviously he took a hit to the butt. Man, if I had a nickel for every nerf dart I found around my house...sheesh.)


Booyah! We found one! We were excited to find this guy, but discouraged at the magnitude of mosquitoes that were swarming us, so we headed back to the truck to drive to our other favorite caterpillar hunting grounds.


This is where we tend to find at least 1 or 2 every year.


Jayme and Jodie are closely inspecting the milkweed plant...


....and wahlah! Another creepy crawly!


Meanwhile, Chase found another and obviously feels quite proud of himself.


We found a total of 6 little critters which we took home and placed in their new surroundings.


They are adapting marvelously, and well they should since they have all the fresh milkweed they could ever want and don't have to fear being eaten by the diabolically evil, Robin Redbreast.




Ummm...sorry to have to tell you this kids, but there's no dating until you're full grown butterflies.








I like this picture of Chase peering through the glass of the aquarium. We spend exorbitant amounts of time watching these fascinating creatures.


And lookie there! One is already preparing to build a chrysalis.


Here's Fabio in his chrysalis. (I had to take this through cellophane so the picture isn't very good.) Once again, for the 4th year, we have missed the making of the chrysalis. They must do it awfully fast because we are like fleas on a hound dog when it comes to sticking to our post as observers of the tank. Those bugger's will be hanging in a "J" for hours and we'll keep checking on it every few minutes, and then "blam", the next thing we know the thing's in a dang chrysalis. We have 2 more hanging in the "J" position and I've looked at them a dozen times in the last 2 hours. I bet the creeps are making the cocoon as I write...so I better go check.


Finally! Finally we have been able to watch these tri-colored changlings morph into the chrysalis stage! We didn't actually see the entire process. The above photo shows the critter already beginning to morph. It seems to begin from the bottom, which is really the head because he was hanging upside down. Notice the ridge of green about midway up the blob. Now look at the next picture....


...the green ridge has moved up higher to the next stripe. This continues until...


...the entire caterpillar is enveloped by the green material.


This picture is of Fabio who built his cocoon first and it now has a ring of beautiful golden spots. Matilda or Amarillo is in the background, hanging in the "j", preparing to begin the morphing process. Wild, I'm tellin' ya, just wild.

Oh My Nerves!! We saw more of the morphing process yesterday and here are the pictures to prove it. I have finally figured out just what is going on with these unbelievable creatures. I wish I would have had my camera sooner, but I was so mesmerized by the whole thing I didn't think to grab my camera right away. Here's what happened. I was walking through the living room and did my usual check on the critters. One that had been hanging in a "j" position was making a lot of movement, so I stopped and continued to watch. The poor thing looked like he was going through convulsions or perhaps had eaten a bad leaf and was preparing to violently heave his lunch. I walked away and stepped into the kitchen for about a minute and came back and there was this green blob on the bottom of the "j". I called for the kids and we watched as the changling wriggled and jiggled, all the while the green blob crept up his body. As the green rose to the top of his body, a black substance was being pushed up which we realized was his old body. He was shedding the old and becoming new...hmmm...might make for a good sermon. Anyhoo, all of a sudden I yelled, "My camera!" and I ran to get it and snapped the following pictures.


The process has begun, notice the old skin at the top.


Can you tell that the little guy is wiggling his heart out?


The old body fell off, there's still a lot of wiggling going on. This looks like hard work.


More wiggling.


From here the lower green material moves up and takes over like in the previous picture from a couple of days ago. Eventually he will be smooth and after a few days the shape changes a bit and the gold gems begin to appear.

So there you have it. Another episode in the life of our beloved caterpillars.

Stay tuned, because in about 5 or 6 days our first cocoon maker, Fabio should be about ready to proudly emerge as a beautiful monarch butterfly. We'll keep ya posted.