Butterfly serendipity

Vincent at his butterfly class.

As Hannibal Smith from the A-Team always said, I love it when a plan comes together. I love it even more when I didn't have a real plan, yet something ties together so nicely that it looks like I did!

Eastern swallowtail caterpillar

Such was the case this week. I found a big old caterpillar munching on my parsley (the one thing in the garden that actually grows), and from past experience I knew that soon he would invite all his friends over for a Parsley Party and I would be left with just the stems. So I scooped him and the parsley leaves up, put them in a jar, and hunkered down to watch. I mean, if he was going to eat my food, the least he could do was chrysalize for a great science project. So the kids and I read lots of books about caterpillars and butterflies, researched our own caterpillar (an eastern swallowtail), did fingerprint caterpillars, drew the caterpillar, talked about symmetry, and looked at butterfly videos online.

Luckily our caterpillar did his part. After four days he suddenly stopped eating and pooping, crawled up on a stem, and overnight turned into a dark brown chrysalis. Success!

The next morning I noticed on the calendar that I had signed Vincent up for some nature class and totally forgot about it (yeah, I'm organized). Off we went to our favorite park, only to discover that the class was about... butterflies! Let me tell you my maternal pride when Vincent informed the teacher that "our eatern wallowwail butterwy just went fru metamowowsis." Be still my heart. They even went off like little safari enthusiasts and caught a tiger swallowtail with their nets.

Then, today we went out to the Museum of Life & Science in Durham. One of the best things there (besides the train) is the Butterfly House, which is home to all sorts of gorgeous butterflies just fluttering about the exotic trees. Turns out we were right on time for the live butterfly release (success again!) so the kids got to see first-hand all sorts of butterflies entering the "wild."

Ah. I love it when a plan comes together!