Boys and Worms

http://picasaweb.google.com/jared.riddle/ParsleyCaterpillars

Parsley caterpillars turn into really pretty butterflies. I wasn't that excited about the notion of keeping the caterpillars, but as you can see the boys went absolutely bonkers. Watching little boys completely fascinated by things that I'd lost interest in re-kindled that fascination in me. Also, it really was cool to see the third cocoon wiggling.



Let me back up. About a week or so ago, we found some bugs chomping our parsley. At first I was annoyed because we already have bunches of little white flies eating our tomato plants and I can't tell if the weeds or watermelon are winning the "battle of neighbor's hill". But on looking at them, all fat and squishy, it made me think of baby cheeks and you can't harm baby cheeks. When the wife saw them, and googled their images she suggested getting a mason jar to keep them in with 'a stick and a leaf to recreate what they're used to' the boys were jazzed.



The boys were very conscientious in providing new parsley daily per the instructions. It only took a day or two for the first one to form a chrysalis and another 2 days for the other two.




Finally this morning when I was getting ready for work, I got to see one of them was already a butterfly and the other was struggling to get out of his cocoon.




Here's the first vid with Sean commentary.




I'd like to put all of the pictures of this morning on this blog, and there are some really good ones but instead I've just uploaded them to picasa for your viewing pleasure.

http://picasaweb.google.com/jared.riddle/ParsleyCaterpillars