R&M Cook Fam: The Butterfly Experiment

A few weeks ago some friends told us about a place to find caterpillars. We made our way to a random spot in Waimea near the high school and boy did we find caterpillars. We watched them for awhile, observing the way they walk and how they eat. We also saw our first real life chrysalises. Kyleigh and I were both surprised to see that they were green with sparkly trim. We pictured them as being grey and bland. We captured a few caterpillars and put them and their food in a large plastic jar. We were so excited to begin a real butterfly life cycle experiment. We watched them carefully for any change. One day we noticed that a few of them had crawled to the top of the jar and after another day or so they were hanging upside down. About a day and a half after they started hanging upside down they changed to chrysalises. We caught the first one in action. It was about 1/4 green when I noticed it. I screamed so loud for the girls that Ridge cryed for the next 10 minutes. It was one of the coolest things I have ever seen. The green shell just crept up over the body of the caterpillar and he did his best to wiggle his body inside of it. It took less than five minutes and it was done. The chrysalis wiggled for the next 10-20 minutes, then it was still. It looked wet for about the same amount of time, then appeared hard. We didn't touch them to check, though. We didn't want to upset the cycle. About a week later the green chrysalis turned dark black. If you looked closely you could see the white spots of the butterfly. Just a few days after that the chrysalis cracked and a butterflly was hanging upside down waiting for it's wings to dry. The chrysalis shell was clear. Once the butterflies dropped from their chrysalis we put a popsicle stick in the jar and they climbed on. We had three at the same time. We had been reading a book called "Surviving the Applewhites." In the book the characters are doing the same thing as we were doing and they got their butterflies to drink kool-aid syrup. We just happen to keep kool-aid syrup in the fridge for shaved ice. We put the butterflies close to the syrup and Rusty and the girls got to watch one of them taking a drink. We left them in the house for a night, then let them go the next day. Well, we let two of them go. The other was lost until later in the day. When we found him he wouldn't climb on the popsicle stick so I finally pulled the screen out and he flew away. We still have one black chrysalis and we are waiting for the butterfly to emerge. This has been one of the coolest things we have ever done. If you ever find a bunch of caterpillars in one area, take a few. Take lots of whatever they are feeding on because they really are incredibly hungry. We had to go back to get leaves a few times. One time we went back to get more leaves. We also got one more caterpillar to give to Naiya whose first caterpillar had died. When we got home the caterpillar was sitting on the counter on top of the pile of leaves while we cleaned out the jar (lots of leaves means lots of poop). Russ was holding Ridge and all of a sudden he started yelling. He had looked over at Ridge just in time to see a caterpillar hanging halfway out of his mouth (thankfully it had not been bitten in half). That was troubling. Then we saw that Naiya's caterpillar was still on the counter. That was even more troubling. Where did he get a caterpillar to eat and how many had he eaten? We finally figured that Rusty must have gotten one on him when he was picking leaves and Ridge had pulled it off of his shirt. We still hope that there was only one on Rusty's shirt. Anyway, everyone should go find some caterpillars because it really is an amazing feature of nature.