June 24, 2010
A miracle before our Eyes

Nicholas has been catching caterpillars all spring. One of them he caught over Memorial Day Weekend, turned into a cacoon overnight, but then nothing happened over the next few weeks.

Then the following weekend at Channel Park in Muskegon we spotted a Monarch caterpillar on some milk week near the dump station as we were leaving.
We quickly located Nicholas' bug house and captured the caterpillar with some milk week leaves.

The next day after returning home we found that it had turned into a chrysallis.
We patiently waited and kept checking on it. Paul had checked on it the day before and it was still the same. Then, as I packed for our next trip I was reminded that we needed to take the bug house with us. I went out to get it and found that a new butterfly had emerged.
Now that it was a butterfly we realized that the bug house was way to small for it to continue to inhabit our humble accommodations. We had to remove the actual screen of the bug house in order to get it out.

It quickly flew across the street, but landed on someone's driveway - not a very good place to prepare for it's new life. Nicholas gave it another nudge and it flew a small distance and landed in a nice bush near the neighbors porch.
A much better place for it to spread it's wings and learn to fly .