Temporary pets

For Christmas, Zoe got a butterfly kit. We wanted to wait until our weather warmed up so we could actually release them outside and they have finally arrived!!
The caterpillars come in this little cup with lots of brown goo on the bottom which is their food.

In 7-10 days they crawl up to the top of the cup, hang upside down and somehow wrap themselves in chrysalids. They did this when we were at convention last week so I'm not really sure how it happens or what it looks like.

Then we put them in their butterfly habitat.

This was the safest place I could think of to hang the basket. At least that dead animal skull is good for something!

It takes about a week for them to come out of their chyrsalids. This morning we woke up and there was one butterfly pumping its wings open. We did a few errands and came home to find 4 butterflies! There is one whose wings are rather deformed but it seems to be doing fine other than that. I think we'll just keep it in the net for its life cycle. And we have one more chrysalis that needs to hatch.

The red drippings on the wall of the basket are meconium, not blood!

The girls think it is hilarious when the butterflies try to fly around...they just crash into the walls, fall down, then climb back up the walls and do it all over again.