My kids and I witnessed something rather amazing today. I had bought a squirrel feeder a couple weeks ago and I hadn’t had time to put it up yet, so it was just leaning against my porch. When I was ready to hang it, my son tells me, “no Mom, you can’t hang it yet, it has a cocoon on it”. Sure enough, underneath the little seat where the squirrel would sit to eat his ear of corn, a little chrysalis was hanging. I left it alone until yesterday when we showed the little chrysalis to a friend. I could start to see through the tiny green bag and could see the outline of wings. We put the squirrel feeder upstairs on our screened in porch so we could observe it as it went along.
Well, today we went out, and it had hatched! A wet Monarch butterfly had just crawled out of the now transparent chrysalis and hadn’t even opened up its wings. My son couldn’t resist and he put his hand out for it to crawl on. The little butterfly took to him right away and we watched it for a long time and even took several photos of it walking all over him, up his arm, on his head. I had never been this up close with a butterfly before. Usually they fly away so fast I can’t get any photos. This one however was still trying to dry out from hatching, no easy feat on a rainy day.
We took the little butterfly out to our newly planted mums and it sat there with its wings held together looking rather miserable with the nasty weather. The kids even made a makeshift umbrella for it, so it wouldn’t be rained on. I gave up and said, well let’s put it back upstairs on the porch so it can dry out and we’ll check on it later.
Never missing an opportunity to learn something, we looked up Monarch butterflies on the internet and found out some fascinating facts. For instance, did you know you could tell the difference between male and female Monarchs? Females have wider veins in the wings, therefore darker wider lines. Our butterfly was a girl! The kids even named her “Julie”, and between doing some writing and learning all about butterflies and their lifespan, habitats, migration and body parts, they kept a close eye on her and checked on her to see if she was ready to fly yet.
I went up to check on them and they told me they saved her from a cobweb in the corner, apparently, she walked up the screen and managed to be caught. They killed the spider, knocked down the web, and set her free again. Julie looked indeed grateful! She continued to walk all over my son, and make herself comfortable on her new “Mommy”. Since he was the first person she saw, I told him that she must think he’s her mom. Well that and from our research we found out butterflies are cold blooded and don’t care to be cold, so sitting on his head was a nice warm spot for her!
We got on with our day, leaving Julie upstairs until we were sure she was ready to fly. She could easily escape, the spaces between the deck boards were wide enough she could go through them. I didn’t expect her to be there later when they went back up.
To their horror and mine, they came down yelling that a praying mantis was eating Julie! Oh no! I went upstairs ready to do battle with the killer bug that was eating our friend, armed with a 3-foot long piece of PVC pipe. There it was, high on the screen with poor little Julie in its grasp. I knocked it down, but it was too late. Julie was dead. Therefore, in a period of about 8 hours, we witnessed the birth and death of something beautiful. Sometimes life just isn’t fair, rescued from a spider, only to die by a praying mantis. The circle of life around here goes too fast! It’s so hard to deal with death when you are a child. No matter how small or insignificant, life means something.
I’ve discovered my son has a way with animals of all types, and a tender heart when things go wrong. I guess that goes to show you how much love when you become a “mom”, even if you become a “mom” to a little butterfly.
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