Spotty Dottie

When I was younger and living on the farm, one of my favorite summer activities was going into the fields to find Monarch butterfly caterpillars. They only eat milkweed and at that time, it was prevalent alongside the roads, etc. so finding the creepy-crawlies wasn't a problem. I'd bring them home, set them up in a Mason jar and feed them milkweed leaves til they made their chrysalis. Then it was 2 weeks of waiting til the beautiful butterfly emerged.
This year, I decided to buy a milkweed plant and hoped that next summer it would be big enough to attract a butterfly to lay her eggs. I figured at 4 years old, the kids would enjoy watching the process unfold like I did so many years ago. Well, imagine my surprise when I found a young caterpillar already munching away on the plant! We set her up in a bugcage and fed her leaves until she climbed up to the roof and got ready to transform into her beautiful green and gold "sleeping bag." The kids were already familiar with the process from watching a Little Einstein's movie about the same thing....they call metamorphosis "changing outfits."

(For a kinda icky video that shows how that process works, check out this link....warning! not for the faint of heart!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPk1SRk0UOs

Well, I got a little nervous about the butterfly's grand entrance because we were leaving to visit Grammy and Grandpa in the mountains on July 30th and I was going to have to transport the bugcage across the state with us if she didn't break out before that. Fortunately, she did emerge the night before we left and we released her just before we jumped in the van to leave. The kids named her Spotty Dottie because of the white spots on her belly. Here are some pictures taken during the month-long adventure and a video of the kids at her release.

Enjoy!


Here's the caterpillar and the chrysalis...


If you look closely, you can see the butterfly wings showing through the chrysalis...
The next morning we woke up to find Dottie had emerged!


The kids spent some time observing her in the cage before we released her.




Be sure to turn down the blog music so you can
hear the kids' reaction to her flying away.