Metamorphosis

A few weeks ago we found a monarch caterpillar on a walk near our home. Aiden is into collecting and looking at bugs at the moment, so we asked if he'd like to take home the caterpillar and watch it turn into a butterfly. He was excited to try it so we cut a bunch of milkweed and took it home.

The caterpillar was small at first but went through several molts, each of which we missed seeing directly. But Aiden did get to watch him doing a lot of munching milkweed leaves and pooping his little caterpillar poops. When Haley was born, Aiden brought the caterpillar with him to HaPa and Grandma's in VT just so he would miss it if anything exciting happened. They saw the caterpillar hanging upside down one morning and figured they had hours before he'd actually construct that whole pupa (how do they do that anyway?)... but within an hour (an hour they weren't watching- are you sensing the theme here?) he was totally encased in a mint green chrysalis with gold dots on it.

Then, yesterday morning, when we woke up the pupa had turned very dark in color and you could see the monarch butterfly wing through its skin. Aiden went off to school then and guess what? He missed it again! By lunchtime the butterfly was out and pumping his wings vigorously. After school Aiden sent him sailing aloft into the perennial garden to finish the rest of his butterfly journey. A cool experiment, but we learned that you have to be very vigilant if you actually want to see any metamorphosis in action!