Monday, September 27, 2010

Science Sunday: Butterfly and Frog Updates

New update on our caterpillars/butterfly:

Having never seen monarch caterpillars or chrysallis before I looked at this chrysallis early Friday morning and thought it had turned black.

Here you can see the threads holding it to the roof of the butterfly garden


I then realized I could see the pattern of the wing:


Later that morning, close to lunch time, I found the butterfly hanging from the chryssalis.
Which I noticed was really clear.


The poor thing's wings are crippled.  She has both wings on her left side, but the one is wrinkled.  And she only has one wing on the right and it is tiny.  Oh, and she is missing some legs.


After realizing she was still alive the next day I made of some sugar water (1 cup of water to 3 tsp of sugar) and soaked a paper towel in it.  I held it right down to her and watched as she started sucking the water.




This morning I allowed Tabitha to hold the paper towel and watch the butterfly.


I think she likes the butterfly


Not sure what I am going to do with her, but I have told the children just because she has something wrong with her doesn't mean she is not special.  She obviously won't fly away, so we will keep her for a while I guess and feed her sugar water.


 We also decided it was time to let the frogs go as there were times we just couldn't get flies to them.  And we figured they were living in quite a hostile environment, all rock and water, no plants.  I am going to miss them though.  I'm sure the girls will too.

 So we took them to church with us and then Steven released
them in the river where he found them as tadpoles all those weeks ago.





Linking up to Science Sunday over at Adventures in Mommydom









4 comments:

  1. Wow he waded in quite far to let them go.

    I'll be curious to see what happens with the butterfly, it's a shame it came out crippled, but I hadn't known/remembered that about their chyrsalis.

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  2. oo man poor butterfly! I am sure the frogs are loving life but I know you guys will have missed them!

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  3. Thanks for stopping by the Cornucopia of Blog Hops! I am now your newest follower! Great pictures.. I have a first grader and I wish I was brave enough to take on homeschooling! It looks like you do some really great stuff!

    Mellisa
    www.funsavingmoney.net

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  4. Thanks for your stop at my blog! Wow! How sweet that you were nursing the crippled butterfly. That in itself is a wonderful lesson, yet a bittersweet one. (A friend told me a story of a class hatching several butterflies and upon letting them go saw a few get eaten. Big life lessons.) Thanks for sharing your link ;)

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