Nature Fun

I've really been enjoying my backyard lately. My zinnias finally bloomed (they got a late start) and are attracting butterflies.

I planted some Italian parsley, specifically to attract Swallowtail butterflies. So I was excited to finally see a baby swallowtail caterpillar on it a couple days ago. I captured this picture today. He may look big, but he's only about as long as the first digit of my index finger.

A friend had given us two of this same kind of caterpillar last year. We put them in a mason jar with air holes in the lid. I fed them parsley and then they made chrysalises. But the sad thing was that they never broke out. It was anti-climatic to say the least. I had built it up all summer to the kids, just to say, "oh well, I guess we won't get to see butterflies being born."

A friend told me that she had the same thing happen to her. They put the chrysalis in a shadow box to save. Then, months later, her son was freaking out over a bug crawling down the hall. It was the butterfly! For some reason, perhaps the weather, it took much longer to break out.

So with this in mind, I kept our chrysalises in the jar, on the windowsill, all winter. I was hoping that a warm spring day would bring them out. But no, they still didn't break out. May passed, then June, and I figured I should just throw them out. But I'm a procrastinator and didn't.

One morning, a couple weeks ago, I was doing my dishes and caught sight of some huge black bug out of the corner of my eye. I looked up and realized it was one of our butterflies! We released it in the backyard. Then a couple days later, the other one broke out. They stayed in that jar, in their chrysalises, for about a year! Now, I call that a miracle!

Here is a picture of one in the jar, just before we released it.

And here he is, on the parsley.