Caterpillars --> butterflies

Lisa and Sten gave us a butterfly habitat and a coupon code to redeem for a cup of 5 caterpillars for Christmas when we visited in Dec 2012. 

We redeemed the code and ordered the cup of caterpillars in April and they arrived a week later looking super tiny (about the size of a folded staple).  Over the course of a week and a half, they ate their food at the bottom of the cup, quadrupled their size looking about the size of cooked penne pasta, and crawled to the top of the cup and formed chrysalides and hung for 5-6 days.  We moved them to the butterfly habitat and watched them hatch in 3 days, then let them outside.  It was really fun for everybody to watch!!

One of them came out with crumpled wings so it wouldn't fly, but the other 4 flew out and away from our sight very quickly!

A recap in picture-form:

4-19

 4-24

 4-29

 5-1

 5-2

 5-6

 5-6

 5-6

The crumpled one sat on the kid's fingers and Calvin thought it might like to climb a tree, but then he thought he would want to go down the slide...I think that was the end of the crumpled butterfly.