A couple of weeks ago, Tonito found a really big cocoon (now known by preschoolers as a "chrysalis"). I told the kids we could keep it in a closed aquarium, because I secretly was afraid it was a spider sac and imagined hundreds of "Charlotte's Web" baby spiders infesting my garage. We kind-of forgot about it, adding to the aquarium sticks, other bugs, rocks, and other nature finds. All of a sudden Vivi said she was going to check on the chrysalis, and came screaming out of the garage "We have a huge butterfly mommy!!!!"
It was drying its wings, hanging from the wire cover!! We flipped over the cover for the afternoon, to allow it to fly away. By evening, the kids got scared that maybe an owl would eat it, so we covered it back up again and by the next day it was ready to fly away. It flew into our back bushes, and the kids still look for him every evening. In their naturalist minds, this might have been the coolest day ever- akin to discovering a new species of rare butterflies that inhabit our backyard:).
1 comment:
Not an expert opinion but is that a cerecropia moth?
How fun that you got to see it, and set it free. Good thing it had the wire to cling to to stretch out it's wings by gravity. I once had some in a jar and they couldn't hang. Poor un-stretched out moth wings.
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