watch a butterfly come out of it's chrysalis

3rd grade…it was very cool!

As a kid, I read an article about “raising” Monarch butterflies. I explained what I wanted to do to my Dad and he built me a “breeding box” (what the article called it, clearly a misnomer) with a screened top. I used to collect Monarch caterpillars every summer, put them in the box with a Mason jar of milkweed (like flowers in a vase, but I blocked the jar opening with a washcloth), and wait for them to metamorphose. I replenished the milkweed daily, riding out into the country on my bike and bringing it back in a paper bag. I did this for several summers, and was featured in a local newspaper article when I was in fourth grade. Dozens and dozens of butterflies hatched in that box, but only once did I come close to seeing any step of the process—and that little caterpillar succumbed to a parasite just after its final skin-splitting began, leaving a bit of the chrysalis showing through its back.

Now I have kids of my own, and a few summers ago we found a good milkweed patch in a walking park near our former home. I had told them about my childhood experiences, so they were excited when we got set up to try it ourselves. And the wonderful thing is that in the course of a single summer, my children and I had experiences I had never had as a child:
1. We found, brought home, and “hatched” six Monarch eggs.
2. We observed part of the process of metamorphosis into a chrysalis.
3. We got to see several butterflies emerge from the chrysales.

It was AWESOME.

I’ve done this several times. No need to send away for caterpillars, if you live in Monarch butterfly territory. Just look around for milkweed plants in the summertime – you’ll probably find some green and yellow striped caterpillars on them. Collect a few in a BIG jar, along with some milkweed and fun stuff to crawl on – and give them fresh milkweed/clean out the jar often (they eat a LOT). Eventually they will make a chrysalis. So cool to watch them come out – just make sure that once they’re out, you let them crawl out of the jar (so that they can spread their wings).

Neato!

My mother sent my daughter a gift one Christmas of a butterfly box. We had to send away for six caterpillars, which we then fed and nurtured in the box. After a few days (weeks? It’s been a while now …), the caterpillars built little cocoons in the box. Ten days later, two of them hatched while my four-year-old daughter and I watched. It was amazing. We then released the butterflies in the wild.

And for those concerned about non-native species, the reason we had to send away for the butterfly caterpillars was so that we could receive butterflies native to our home.