Today was the last day of Nature Explorer Camp.
On day 1 we took a walk, saw some real stuffed animals and made some bug nets.
On day 2 we made shirts, we had a bog tromp, ate cattail and got soaked in the river!
 On day 3 we played “bugs, insects and spiders”, played hide and seek, petted Vincent (the turkey) and Adrian wanted me to kidnap him!
This is a picture of McKinley. He is one week old.
:( We think the other Monarch eggs died before they hatched . 🙁 They are supposed to hatch between 4 and 7 days, and it has been 8 days. Their leaves got all moldy between last night and today. We put their leaves under our milkweed so that if they do hatch, they will climb and get food.
We will try again.
We found between 8-10 Monarch eggs down the road. We are going to raise them. We are trying to keep them all the same age this year.
We are also going to put sand on the bottom of their cages when they get bigger. We only have to pour out the sand and put in clean sand to clean their cages.
Because we got them early, we can do twice as many (Momma says maybe) and let them mate. Then they can lay eggs. This set will last only a couple of weeks before dying so they have to lay their eggs quickly. Maybe we can watch the babies grow. 🙂
P.S. Do you have any ideas on how to raise Luna Moths?  That would be fun too.  Momma said we could if we learn how and where to get the eggs or caterpillars and food.
Daddy saw the first Hummingbird today! We put up the feeder today.
How do you like our Pumpkin Imitator? I noticed yesterday 
that it started looking like a pumpkin in color.
Don’t you think it is neat that God made Maple trees so bright orange in the fall? And then being able to tap some of them to make maple syrup?
Thank you God for Maple syrup and all the bright colors that fall brings!
We let eight butterflies go yesterday.
Before we let them go, Adrian wanted to hold a butterfly!
Most of them did not want to go. Two flittered off immediately. The others we waited awhile and put them on the Thistle in our front yard. When they flew away we yelled “Bye butterflies!”
One of their proboscises unwound, it was eating nectar! Â 
Here are some pictures, that Momma took.
I didn’t want to let them go, but Momma made me. We let them go so they could fly to Mexico or someplace in California.
The butterflies thought, “what are they doing? Hooray! I’m hungry. Feed me!” or “Goodbye!” Flitter flitter.
After we let them go, they came back sometimes and we were all very happy.
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.
