Metamorphosis

A month or two ago, Bryan & Tess found some caterpillars under a board in the field by our house. At first they thought they were monarch caterpillars, so we went out with Tess's bug-catcher and gathered 2 of them up, hoping to see some cool monarch butterflies. Well, I did some searching online and discovered that this type of caterpillar will turn into a moth, not a butterfly. But, who cares? It's still so cool to see the cocoon, right!? So, we put some leaves and grass in the bug-catcher and hoped for the best. After a week or two, I thought one had died because it was curled up (and I couldn't see the other one.) So I took them out to the garden and dumped them out. But then I saw a cocoon! One of them had already wrapped up in the cocoon, and I guess the other was getting ready to. So, I gathered the stuff back up and we kept watching.

The cocoon was a lot different from the butterfly cocoons that I had had in my Kindergarten class. The monarch butterfly cocoons are smooth and green, then they turn grayish, then kind of clear before the butterfly comes out. The caterpillar also builds the cocoon to hang from something--like from a tree branch. These moth cocoons are fuzzy and black and don't change at all over time; plus they weren't hanging--they were just right on the floor of the bug-catcher.

Yesterday when we got home from the cabin, I discovered a moth on the wall of the bug-catcher! The kids were SO excited! We still have one cocoon to go, so we're going to watch it carefully; we hope to see the moth actually emerge from it! It was really cool!

Here's the other cocoon, still in the bug-catcher:
Here's our new friend (we let him go last night, but not before he crawled in Tess's hand & up her arm. He pooped--or something?!--on her and she started freaking out! But she was able to settle down after the moth was safely back on the sidewalk.)

And, just in case you're curious, I just googled the difference between a cocoon and a chrysalis (I'm never sure if I'm using the terms correctly) and here is what it said: "Butterflies hatch from a chrysalis, a life stage made of a hardened protein. A cocoon is spun from silk and surrounds the pupa of many moths." So there ya go!