The Metamorphosis

I have a nursery on my porch right now. A butterfly nursery. About 3-4 weeks ago, a neighbor gave us five black swallowtail eggs from her dill plants. We put them in a plastic container with air holes in the lid and checked them every day to see if they'd hatched.

About a week later, these tiny black caterpillars emerged and started eating. And eating. Oh, yes, my friends, I think given the chance, Eric Carle would have called his book the Extraordinarily, Insatiably Very Hungry Caterpillar. I was replacing the dill and cleaning out their little plastic home once or twice a day. What goes in must come out, I guess, but who knew five little caterpillars could create so much poop? I also discovered something I didn't know about the process. About halfway through their growth cycle, they shed their skin and that's when they go from being black to the green, yellow and white I was familiar with. Cool!



One by one, they each went into a chrysalis. They'd suspend themselves from a thin strand on the sticks I'd placed in their cage, and the next time I'd check, a green or brown chrysalis would be hanging from the spot where a caterpillar once was.





All five were in this state before we left town for the Fourth of July holiday. And when we returned, we had our first butterfly! Although it was nighttime, I thought it best to release it right away since I didn't know how long it'd been waiting to get out to go find some flower nectar. The little thing crawled up onto Owen's finger for a few seconds before taking off and quickly disappearing into the darkness. Today, a second one emerged, and I suspect we'll be releasing the rest of them this week.





Sometime during this whole process -- probably one morning as I was scraping caterpillar poo onto a paper towel -- I told myself that this was it; these were the only butterflies I'd be raising this summer. Well, I found three monarch eggs today, and I'll give you one guess as to where they are now. Yup. Porch.