Butterflies

08/06/04:Thank you everybody for sending those names! We got a whole lot of great name ideas. These are the ones we picked:
Amelia
Sugar
Shoosha
Fuzzy
Flutterbudget
They grew a lot! They made webby stuff in their cup. They have a lot of legs. They eat a lot!

--story by Thea and Faith 08/06/04

08/08/04: Yesterday the caterpillars were practicing hanging upside down. And this morning two of them were getting ready to turn into chrysalises, because they were hanging upside down kind of curled under.

We went away for a little while to the mall and Walmart and Grandmom and Granddad's house, and then when we came home one of the caterpillars was turned into a chrysalis!This is how the chrysalis looks, the Painted Lady chrysalis. The white dots look like the caterpillar's legs!

--story by Thea 08/08/04

08/11/04: This is a picture of the butterflies' house. We move them in here while they're in their chrysalises.This is all of them in their chrysalises. All five caterpillars changed into their chrysalises by Monday (the 9th). We miss the caterpillars because they crawled a lot. We thought they were really cute when they were crawling around. But when they changed into their chrysalises we're ready for them to change into butterflies!

This is the lid of the cup with the chrysalises attached. We're going to put it into the tent. Look at all the webby stuff! There's poop stuck in the webby stuff and I think some skins. We had to cut that off.

The caterpillars are in their tent! Mommy put it in there with a safety pin.

Here is the chrysalises in their home. Caterpillars stay in their chrysalises for 7 to 10 days. So we're going to start looking for butterflies around Saturday.

This is me holding some poop. It looked like chunky leaves. It was green. I thought it was gross. Thea was going to eat it! No I was not!

Here we're looking at a caterpillar skin. The caterpillar got rid of the skin when it was making a chrysalis.

Here is a picture of skin and poop on the cup lid. The skin is black and kind of furry and the poop is green and kind of gross.

--story by Thea and Faith 08/11/04

08/15/04: When we woke up in the morning, two chrysalises looked different! They looked black! They looked like they were going to hatch. We saw three lines at the top of the chrysalis. Then came the pattern of the Painted Lady butterfly's wings! When we saw the pattern of the wings we knew that that was going to hatch TODAY!

When we were watching a video called See How They Grow: Pets, when the movie was finished, we looked at the tent and a butterfly was out!

Shoosha was the first one to come out. When she came out she started crawling up the tent. When she got to the top she straightened out her wings and uncurled her proboscis. Her eyes were shaped like circles, and they had many sides like a diamond! On the topside her wings are orange, black and white, and on the bottomside they are gray and looked like they had little eyes!

Then, Amelia came out! I got to see that! It looked like, first came the head, and then the body, and then the wings. She came out and she touched another chrysalis, and it wiggled and wiggled and wiggled and wiggled! And then she started crawling to the top and let her wings dry and meconium came. The meconium is the stuff in the picture that looks like blood coming out from the butterfly's butt. But really it's the leftover paint from its wings.

Now it was time to put food in the tent. In this picture we're mixing up sugar water. We mixed sugar and water. Everybody knows that!Then we got some carnations and cut off the heads. We put the flowers in the tent and then we put the sugar water on the flowers.

It looks like Amelia likes the red flower!We liked it when Shoosha flies. Here we are taking our picture with the tent! We had five chrysalises to begin with, and now only three left!

--story by Thea and Faith 08/16/04

08/16/04: We woke up this morning and we saw three! There were three chrysalises broken and three butterflies were out! The third one out was Sugar. There were two chrysalises left and they were getting darker and darker and darker! Suddenly when we were watching JoJo's Circus, the one with Flutterbudget hatched! Flutterbudget did the same thing as the other ones. And then the last one came out -- that was Fuzzy. We got to watch Fuzzy come out.

In this picture you can see two butterflies with their wings spread out! They're sitting on the flowers! The butterflies moved around a lot today. Spotty tried to get them! He jumped up on top of the TV, and the butterflies got scared.

We took the butterflies outside. It looked like the butterflies wanted to come out, but we weren't going to let them go! We're going to keep them for four days. After four days we are going to let them go, because they don't want to stay in the tent forever and live here. But we're going to miss them when they're gone.

How many butterflies can you see in this picture? There were four of them sitting down at the bottom and one up at the top.

--story by Thea and Faith, 08/16/04

08/20/04: Today was the day we let the butterflies go. Well we got to keep them which they didn't change back into chrysalises and back into caterpillars. Well, Spotty was looking at them when we were watching them. We had much fun with them. They fluttered around. When they opened their wings, we could see white and black and orange.

Allie was looking at them! Allie wants to get the butterflies. Scratch the tent open. If she caught them she'd eat them!

Spotty's going to jump on the tent! Because he wants to eat them! If he jumped on the tent, he'd squish the tent, and the butterflies and the flowers and the orange!

We're sitting outside, looking at the butterflies. The butterflies are excited to get out.

We're unzipping the tent here. The top only opens halfway.

Flutterbudget was the first one to fly out! She wanted to get out the most! She was always the one to be fluttering around in the tent. When she got out, she went over the house!

I'm looking to see who's next to come out! The next one to come out was Shoosha. She went to the right.

This is Fuzzy up near the top of the tent. When Fuzzy flew out, she landed in the grass! She was excited to be in the grass for the first time. Here is Fuzzy sitting in the grass. She sat there for a while. Then she flew into the pine tree.She sat there for a while too!

This one is Sugar. Sugar and Amelia were the last ones to go. When Sugar flew out, she flew around back. Then came Amelia. Amelia flew into a tree, the tree in front of our house! I think she was sitting on a leaf. Later, we saw one of them flying over the house! It was Sugar. We hope that they'll stick around here for a while. We put carnations and oranges around the side of the house, so they will stick around and eat.

Thea and Faith were sad to see the butterflies go. Amelia was Thea's favorite, and Shoosha was Faith's favorite. But, it was so much fun to raise the caterpillars, and watch them turn into chryalises, and it was so exciting to see the butterflies come out! We are glad that Amelia, Shoosha, Fuzzy, Sugar, and Flutterbudget were our pets. We know that they are having a great time exploring the big world! Thanks to everyone for visiting our website and watching our pets grow along with us!

--story by Thea, Faith and Becky, 08/20/04