Our Caterpillars

We woke up to an exciting morning with our new found pets. The chrysalis or pupa was a beautiful butterfly. Drew was so excited he wanted to keep the butterfly for a long time. Once it started to fly around we decided that it needed food. After a little coaxing, Drew decided the butterfly could be let go. It was amazing to see this butterfly, named Buttery, fly against the blue sky. There were some tears and a hug. Drew realized that we had more caterpillars. One of the caterpillars had climbed to the top and connected it's self to the house. We expected to have chrysalis in the morning. It was still hanging there. I thought it was dead. We proceeded to make breakfast. By the time breakfast was made it was in a cocoon or chrysalis.

Curiosity got the best of me and I found out the caterpillars names. They are a gulf fritilary. Apparently people plant the passion vine for the butterflies. I didn't know this when I planted it. I just like the beautiful flowers. Maybe some day I will have a passion vine that isn't a hybrid that will produce fruit. I love the yummy exotic fruit. I first tasted one in Hawaii on a hike. It was a wild vine.

We are having a great time with two other chrysalis that we found today and two new big caterpillars.

The Caterpillars

This is a passion flower. It grows on a vine that gets eaten by caterpillars every year. So I have given up the fight with the caterpillars. They won. They eat all of my leaves off my vine every year. Fortunately they grow back. This year it has had a difficult time so there isn't many vines.

A few Sunday's ago we were driving by a house that had a caterpillar house for free. So we stopped and picked it up. Today when I got bored of the computer and watching TV I decided that it would be fun to take Drew out back and find a few caterpillars. We found big ones so we didn't have to feed them my passion vine for a long time.

I didn't know that this was going to be a big event at our house. Drew has us looking at the caterpillars every time one of them gets to the top of their new home. He takes them in every room with him. They have also went on a bike ride to Nanny's house to find their baby. He wanted the caterpillars to be a family. One of them is already starting to go into a cocoon or chrysalis. I didn't realize that Drew needed a pet so bad. He calls them all Catty because they are all caterpillars. It has been fun and cute watching him "take care of them". I don't know how long they are going to last. If we get a butterfly out of this them we will post a picture. They are pretty orange, black and white butterflies.