Saturday, June 11, 2011

Butterflies


Last month, Madi became somewhat obsessed with the Live Butterfly Garden "as seen on T.V."  Maybe you've seen this commercial that fascinated her so.  She would shout for me whenever it would come on, so that I could see this amazing TV offering.

Bubba and Grandpa shipped it to Madi as a graduation gift. Her eyes nearly popped out of her head when we opened the box. She was so excited. We set up the habitat in our dining room and watched the caterpillars turn into chrysalids within days. They were then ready to be transferred into the habitat. It really is amazing to witness metamorphosis.

A couple of mornings ago, as we were eating breakfast, Madi noticed that we had butterflies!  Over the course of the day, we watched them hatch from their cocoons. I discovered that Madi will be a great birthing coach someday! As she sat there on the edge of her seat, watching the cocoons wriggle, she encouraged them with, "C'mon! C'mon! You can do it! You can do it!" She was even taking deep breaths on their behalf! 

We scurried around for the directions on how to feed them, but Daddy really wasn't comfortable with hanging on to them for too long, so we went into the butterfly garden to set them free that evening.  The mission was successful until they discovered that one of the butterflies had a wounded wing. Daddy took the butterfly out of the habitat and allowed Madi to place it on one of our milkweed plants in the garden. We haven't seen the butterfly since, so we hope that he has healed and flown away. If you haven't seen caterpillars turn into butterflies before, it is totally worth the $19.95! 


 
 
 

1 comment:

Biba said...

I never had the honor of witnessing this in person. Maybe some day. So glad Madi got so much out of it. :-)