Baby Butterflies

For Easter Roman got a Butterfly habitat. It came with a card that he could send in for butterfly larvae so he could watch them grow from larvae then watch them form their chrysalises then emerge as butterflies. The little cup with 5 tiny larvae came in the mail and we watched them grow. We rooted for them as we saw them going up to form their chrysalises. We were worried as we saw one of the chrysalises knocked off the top when another was forming its chrysalise. We were sad when one of the butterflies got stuck emerging and died. We really rooted for him, hoping that he would make it out. We decided that we would release the butterflies.

The first one took flight immediately. He flew a bit then stopped on the grass. Roman went to see where he went. He watched it for a few minutes before it flew away. The second was just like the first. Flew a few feet, stopped on a blade of grass then took flight.

The other 2 never flew out of the enclosure. So I picked up the third one because he was sitting on the papertowel that we had on the bottom to try to get it to take off. It kept trying to fly, but it would just flutter like crazy then rest again. He sat on the sidewalk for a few minutes, then he flew a bit and I was able to get him to land on my hand. It was then that I noticed that he was missing one leg. The forth butterfly we were pretty sure wouldn't be able to fly. He got stuck on the watermelon that we put in the habitat for them to eat and his wings got stuck together. After about 30 minutes Roman and I made a decision. We decided to bring the two invalid butterflies back into the enclosure and we kept them.


They are still living in their habitat. The one that is missing a leg tries to fly almost every day (Spencer doesn't understand why he can't fly if he's just missing a leg, you fly with wings, I don't know why he can't fly, but I do know that he can't.) A few days after the release attempt we sent our invalid butterflies to the family petting zoo (Janeene's house) to live with the turtle, fish, birds, dog and whatever other pets they have living at their house right now. Jaren is so good with animals he was so excited to have these butterflies. He called me the night before we gave them to him to see how many there were and what kind they were. I hope the butterflies live a long (for butterflies, they only live 1-3 weeks) happy life in their habitat.