Raising Butterflies.

When I was a teacher, each spring we ordered caterpillars for the classroom so that students could watch them turn into butterflies. The year of the pandemic, I ordered a kit for home and each day, I’d log into zoom and show my class how the caterpillars were growing, and how they were each going into their chrysalis and then how each one had emerged a beautiful Painted Lady Butterfly! The funny thing was — my own kids, Javi and Lola at the time, were also amazed! And so began the tradition of raising butterflies!

It’s always a little risky because so much can go wrong. It’s sad when they don’t enter their chrysalis the proper way and then they don’t emerge or worse… they emerge with some wing deformity that you just know means they’re probably going to end up as someone’s lunch once released! Even worse is when someone IN the house causes the caterpillars and/or butterflies pain — a dropped container, a knocked over habitat, a squished net, a lack of water! Life is so fragile, ya know!

But every year, despite the sadness I feel when things don’t work out perfectly, I order that same kit and try again. The prospect of having butterflies in our yard — even though I’m sure they all just fly away — is so exciting. Plus, seeing the kids watch the process is sweet. They have so many questions and it brings up such interesting topics. So a few weeks ago, our caterpillars arrived!

Eva (and Walker) were the only ones home at the time but once the others arrived, everyone wanted to watch them. Eva thought she was going to blink and they would be butterflies, so she really didn’t take her eyes off them! We started with 10 caterpillars!

We did a lot of observing, and after a few days they grew and grew and grew and put themselves into their chrysalises! The kids were AMAZED — even though they’ve seen it before — apparently no one remembered it from the year before.

I don’t actually like insects (big surprise!), so I had Sean move them (gently) from the container into the butterfly habitat. Only 8 survived the transfer. But once they were there we had to wait… and wait… and wait… so, patiently! Until one day… probably 2.5 weeks after they arrived at our house — we had a butterfly! We added some water and a slice of lemon into the habitat but other than that they are pretty self-sufficient.

Once one comes out, the others quickly follow. So before we knew it, we had 2 and then 3 butterflies!

They are hard to take pictures of because of the net. It was, at this point that the cats had to be banished from the room. When they emerge, they flap their wings to dry them, and the cats couldn’t handle even that slight movement. I thought the butterflies were goners a few times because the cats were so quick at jumping toward them.

We kept checking and checking but the last 3 took three additional days to emerge! I’m sort of disappointed that we didn’t get a chance to watch one emerge from its chrysalis. The first day it happened, Eva and I went into the room and checked every 20-30 minutes and we missed it every time!

I also missed the butterflies being released because I was at the doctor with Walker! Such a bummer — but we were headed out on vacation and we needed to release them before we left… in fear that if we didn’t the cats would get them! So Sean lead the butterfly release mission.

But I’m happy to say that of the 8 chrysalises that survived the transfer — 8 butterflies flew out of the butterfly habitat! (So he says…!)

We are very proud of our Painted Lady Butterflies! 🙂