As I told you yesterday, six butterflies emerged.  Today another one came!   Ten have hatched, three we released and there is one more to go.  When they are all finished, I am going to be sort of happy and sort of sad.  Happy because I got to see them, sad because we will have to release them.

This one we rescued.  It’s leaf dried up and fell off.  Momma taped it up to the aquarium.  The next morning the tape did not hold and it fell!   Momma and Daddy tied a string around the chrysalis, put a drop of super glue on the knot and then taped it up.  This one was the first one to emerge!

Yesterday, Thomas and Sarah came to watch them emerge.  They watched all of them emerge.

When they emerge, they millimeter  out  of  their  chrysalises :)  Then most of them stretch out their wings.  Momma says it looks like they are stretching their backs.  Then they dry their wings.  When they are coming out, it takes about one minute.  It takes a half hour to an hour to dry their wings.

When their wings are dry we move them to the cage we made for them.  Before that we play with them!

Andrea did this.  She put two butterflies on my arms and then put this one on my face!  I was not impressed.  Momma thought it was funny!

Grandpa sent us this note:

Thanks for the morning.  Ma (Grandma Nana) enjoyed watching the new butterflies, she had never seen that happen before.

We tried to feed to feed them the day they hatched, but they did not eat anything.  We gave them watermelon last night.  They did not eat it.

Today we were hoping to let them free (sort of) and because of the rain we didn’t.  We gave them sugar water and watermelon.  And when they land on it and their proboscis unrolls, they drink the sweet juice from inside.  This picture is of us feeding it on a Q-tip.

We also tried to play with them, but they kept flying away.  We gave them a shower.  We spritzed them with water!

I don’t have time to tell you too much right now, but six butterflies came out of their chrysalises today!  I will write again tomorrow.

Right now we have them in a home made butterfly cage connected to our ceiling.

Faster and Eating emerged this weekend.  When we had to let them go, I really did not want to.

Eating, I had to leave to get him to go.  We got to play with him a little bit.  We had fun with him.   The girls got him in their hair.  We tried on Adrian, but he went “No! No! No! No!”.    He climbed on my finger and all over me.  We tried to get him onto a flower.

He emerged in the morning when it wasn’t to warm.  It means that he could not fly as well.  Plus I think he liked me, because he would not fly away when I held him outside.

Faster did not come quite as fast, but he flew away fast!  (Maybe Faster was a good name for him!)  He came about 10:30.   When he was about to come, Momma said she heard a crack and told us to come.  We got to see him emerge most of the way!

We let him free around 1:30.  The weather was warm!

Whenever we tried to play with him, he would fly to the window.   He was ready to leave.  I did not want him to leave yet.   When we took him outside, he just flew around the tree and I think into the woods.

Later that day we saw another butterfly that looked like he had emerged that day.

On 22 August we moved the Peanut Butter, the Hatchery, and the Nursery caterpillars to the clean cage.  We put the Blue Lid Caterpillars into the Nursery.

The caterpillars in the cage eat and eat and eat and eat!  We kept going to get milkweed!  They ate it all again.  Then in the night we had to get some!  Then in the morning we had to get some more! ):

Saturday night we were worried that our butterfly might not make it, cause her chrysalis was turning black.  We could sort of see through it though, so we did not know.

On Sunday morning before church we watched the first butterfly emerge!  I missed it up to her head coming out.  Then I watched her pump up her wings.   We went to church.

When we got home, she was drying out her wings.  She did not want to eat.  We brought her outside and she flittered away!

I didn’t want to let her go.  We worked so hard to raise.  We let her go so she could migrate to Mexico.  I want to go to Mexico when it is winter here.  So I can see if we can go to see lots of monarchs hibernate in big big big BIG groups!