The Butterfly Chronicles - Part IV

Wow! Talk about a quick few days!

It is now Sunday, August 8, 2009. I am blogging for the period spanning from Thursday, the 5th to yesterday, Saturday, the 7th. Honestly, nothing much happened between Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.

On Thursday, I got home from work, let the dogs out, changed clothes, and did all that regular stuff I usually do after a long day at the office. I stopped at the table to check out our cats. Much to my surprise, I found the first of our two larger guys on the side of the flower pot that holds what is left of the parsley plant. He was looking like he needed some Imodium in the worst way, but I recognized this for what it was...Our friend was cleaning out his insides to prepare for the next step in the journey. Last weekend, while trying to determine what the heck had attacked my parsley so vigorously, I read that on one of the sites I hit. You know me. I got the camera out and took a couple of pictures.

Our second of the two larger cats was resting colorfully on a twig in the corner of the terrarium. I glanced below his position, and lo and behold was another "colon cleanse" for lack of a better phrase. I just KNEW theses little guys were getting ready to graduate to another phase in their lives. I was happy and excited, but a little sad at the same time. These two guys (whom I'd initially thought were tomato worms) were kind of our mascots, and I'd kind of become fond of them. I've been telling myself to think about what they will look like when their metamorphosis is complete, so that helps.

On a side note, I followed a link a friend gave me regarding using worms for compost. Apparently this is a really cool trend that composts a lot more quickly than the old traditional method. Getting back on topic, however, I read on the compost worm site that once you start something like that, there is then an element of human responsibility, taking them out of their ordinary environment like that. I believe the same applies, here, so please, if you're not able to care for these squirmy guys, please don't try this at home. Remember, once they've reduced your once healthy parsley/carrot/fennel plant down to nothing but twigs and sticks, they are going to need to eat. We feed ours curly parsley from the grocery store.

Back to the story...
Around 2:00 pm on Friday, I got a call from my son while I was at work letting me know that our big green friends were starting to "string up." I told them to PLEASE get a camera ready on macro in case something more drastic occurred before I could get home.

Nothing changed. In fact, I read that it could take up to 24 hours once they've strung up to do anything else. *whew*


Needless to say, I watched them like a hawk for several hours prior to going to bed. We woke up yesterday morning, just certain that they'd morphed into pupa while we slept. Nope. The great change did not occur until yesterday afternoon, about 4:00 p.m. for our big guy, and about 5:30 p.m. for the smaller of the two.

Please let me apologize for some of these photos. I'm a portrait & landscape photographer, and I'm not really thrilled with my macro filter, or my ability to use it. :)

I had read that most of the pupa are brown in color, to blend in with their surroundings, to keep them safe from predators. Then I read that occasionally you will see green ones also. The first is brown and the second is bright green with yellow spots. I do note that the second one found his spot by a branch from a green and yellow/white-leafed bush my husband brought in.


The following are the images I shot between #1 & #2 shedding their cat skins for one final time.

I'm still feeding the next batch parsley. I feel like it will be another week before they decide to start "cocooning," as they had just hatched when we discovered their older siblings at about the same sized. We still have itty-bitty instars, too, so I suspect this may be a rotating adventure.
I would like to thank Bob Moul for putting up the website that we found that outlined the process and explained how to put a terrarium together for our little green and brown family. His web site is here . Please visit him if you get a minute. His photos and slide shows are outstanding! :)




Until next time.....