going to become an old lady who endlessly discusses the problems with her digestion, in the crazed belief that people are enthralled. I won't tell you all about my sore tummy, my mystery symptoms, my gallstones, my lactose intolerance, and golly, maybe I have gluten intolerance too? I will not discuss complications such as, 'perhaps it's the iron supplements that are throwing things out whack'. I will not disgust you with detailed dissertations on my inner workings.
I will only tell you that I'm fast running out of things to eat. And from here on, if I mention the words tummy troubles, you'll know that I mean there's way more, which you don't want to know.
***
On a more cheerful note, some more of the darned butterflies have hatched. Poppins was right! Oozing black & green is apparently part of their beauty ritual. We have 5 which look pretty much what a butterfly is supposed to look like. We have 1 who will qualify for disability payments and free dental under our provincial welfare program. He has half his chrysalid stuck to his back and only teeny tiny wings. I have read somewhere that sometimes if you keep these guys and keep feeding them, they do eventually develop.
We also have 1 who has passed on to the great mallow in the sky. He started to come out of the chrysalid but apparently miscalculated his size v. the size of the chrysalid he made for himself and he got stuck. I felt like a midwife for a while. We were all standing by the cage & I was saying push, push, come on now! You're doing fine, just a little push! but to no avail.
There are still about 5 chrysalids which look like they might produce something. So optimistically we might get 10 out of 29 (we gave away 3 & I believe they all died before spinning). Those are not great odds IMO and I don't know if I can't wholeheartedly recommend this activity.
2 comments:
Congratulations, you're a new Mommy!!
Butterflies and butterfly emergings are just the coolest things EVER. I'm so glad that some of them have worked out. I've been reading for quite a while and ever since you started being concerned for the possible success of the project I've felt horrible for you, so I'm glad to hear that there have been some successes.
We bought a nice amount (maybe 6?) of Painted Lady caterpillars once from some science place and they all hatched out beautifully... and it's so interesting a process... so I'm very glad to hear that some of yours have been successful. It would have been SUCH a drag to not have had some work out well.
~Jo
We got our 10 caterpillars from Insectlore. One died, but we had 9 beautiful butterflies.
I didn't buy any this year, because in years past we've had plenty of black swallowtail butterflies crawling all over the parsley in my garden. So I planted extra parsley, and butterfly-attracting flowers ... and this year, not One. Single. Caterpillar.
Go figure.
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