Some very hungry caterpillars of our own

For Henry's birthday my Dad and Sandi gave him a Butterfly Bungalow kit. In the box is a bungalow (a little home for butterflies) and a postcard to mail to the company in order to receive some real caterpillars in the mail. It was the perfect gift for Henry who loves Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar and is super curious about bugs and other insects.

Shortly after mailing our postcard, our mailman brought this special delivery to the door:

Henry holding his caterpillars

There were three caterpillars/larvae inside this jar with enough food for them to eat to become big, huge caterpillars and change into chrysalides (a.k.a. cocoons) To keep this little jar safe from all of the little hands in our house we put it on our mantle and Henry checked on it a few times a day. The caterpillars definitely grew, it was crazy to see.

Henry looking at the caterpillars turned chrysalides
After about a week all 3 of them climbed to the top of the jar, hung upside down and turned into chrysalides.

The next step was to transfer them to their little butterfly home, the Butterfly Bungalow.
After another week the butterflies emerged! We woke up to find them flying around their little home. They are Painted Lady butterflies.We fed them flowers from outside and watched them for a few days. William, our resident animal lover liked watching them the most.

Since we read that their life span as a butterfly is only 2-4 weeks, we didn't want to keep them for too long. Monday night we released them in our backyard. The book that came with the bungalow said that they can typically be seen in the vicinity of their release for several days.

Henry is very concerned with them "finding their mommies". (He is going through a big mommy stage and wants to know where everyone's and everything's mommy is.)They must be off looking for their mommy because we haven't seen them around. But that's good news to their doting caretaker Henry.

Here is Henry releasing the butterflies Monday night.

Thank you Dad and Sandi for the great gift. Henry absolutely loved having these here to watch and take care of. We all learned a lot through the experience. And for those of you who thought you would never read so much about science on my blog, I hope you learned something too! :-)