sidebar, revisited

if you've been following along you will recall my post a few weeks back, titled 'sidebar', when we discovered a butterfly cocoon on our house.  then, moments later had a caterpillar come and visit our cocoon.  Here's a pic i took of our visiting caterpillar with his friend's cocoon in the background:

he was quite the model.

well, i did not realize, but my little girl caught this caterpillar and put him in her bucket.  *disclaimer* we have strict rules about critter capturing, but this guy was able to climb the side of our house, so i doubt an open bucket would have caged him long.  she but a stick in there so he could climb out and a few leaves to munch on.

the next day we found that this caterpillar had made his own cocoon right inside her bucket!  i am completely regretful that i did not photograph this second cocoon, but it looked exactly like the first one, on our house.  since he decided to stick himself in such a portable location we decided to take him up to the school and show her class.  it was pretty awesome to be able to show them photos of the caterpillar, and his cocoon.

about 3 weeks after we discovered the cocoon on our house that butterfly escaped.  i assumed that our bucketed friend would soon follow suit, so i got a little net and covered the top of the bucket.  yes, yes, i realize that this means he was trapped in there, but we just wanted to see him before he flew away.  not two days later i found this:

you can see the vacant cocoon on the side of the bucket and our little friend on the bottom.  his wings were all curled up, still, so he wasn't prepared to do much flying.  i put the net back on and took him up to see the kiddos at school again.  when we got back i did some reading and found out that monarchs eat juice from oranges, among other things, so i threw some orange bit in there and put the net back on so that my little girl could release him when his wings straightened out.

we left him in there all day, but his wings were still curled, so we released him just the same.

 

he is such a looker!

i hope that he is doing well, wherever he is, now.

jo