We have BUTTERFLY!!
Sorry, this is Tuesday. My education obligations and medical appointments had me running. No time for the computer. Until now!
We had our first butterfly on Sunday!
Just one little guy…well…he was big…bigger than I thought. But he was all alone. And Stevie (my daughter) was not home! She was with her dad. I tried to get hold of her all day, but no luck. Sunday went into Monday. Our butterfly dried and fluttered and flew around in his small home. He was hanging upside down on the netting on top of the container. We tried to let him go at dusk, Sunday night…no luck. He just stayed stuck. So we tucked him in for the night and waited until Monday morning. Less than 45 seconds with the net back and off he went. I tried to catch as much on video…but you know how these young butterflies can be! Off to find a mate! Not even a Disney pause to say thanks!
Oh well. The rest were still hanging all chyrsalis-style. Not moving. That was 10 am. Monday. These pics and video are from that point.
I also checked the internet for any care tips or general butterfly info. A few things I learned:
1. The warmer the temperature outside/inside/wherever they are hanging, determines the speed of metamorphosis. Broad time frame, 10-15 days. We had our first at Day 12.
2. The new butterflies only need to dry for a few hours. Our first guy took many hours. But….
3. They need heat to fly! Their wings, and bodies, need to be warm in order to lift off the ground and stay lifted. Once they get flying the energy it takes to keep flying generates the heat they need! That’s why…
4. Alot of butterflies have darker exterior wing colors. To absorb the heat of the sun. That’s also why…
5. They flutter their wings! It creates more surface area and warms up their bodies. Who knew?
6. Butterfly caterpillars make a chrysalis. Moth caterpillars make cocoons. (The guy on the internet was kind of picky about this distinction)
7. Once the butterfly flies away, they look for mates, start a family, lay their eggs, and die.
8. It is kind of sad, but these particular type, Mourning Cloak, can live up to 10 months! Pretty long for a butterfly. We are nothing, if not sturdy out here in the Midwest!
9. One extra fyi–The Mourning Cloak is so named because its wings resemble the type of cloak that was worn in the 1800’s for mourning the dead.
And now YOU know too! Go out and impress your friends. First take a look at these though:
He was a milk jug caterpillar. After busting out of the chrysalis, he clung to the side for awhile.
Opening the wings.
Creating a home at the bottom of the plastic tub.
We noticed purple flowers were the favorite.
Just not ready to go yet...
In case you were curious. This is their very temporary home. Exterior.
Interior. With non-emerged chrysalis. There are 6 hanging. (Hard to see) And 4 more inside the milk jug. We had a total of 11.
Cocoon Update! Soon to be followed by a Butterfly Update! (Real soon!)
Almost immediately after the caterpillars were in the milk container they began the process of making their cocoons. We had eleven caterpillars, and we have 11 cocoons. It is pretty amazing. It took them only a few hours to create the cocoon around themselves. And now they hang. Waiting. Time and temperature decide how fast they metamorphisize. We estimated June 18.
Follow the whole story HERE. (First posting)
These are pics of the caterpillars when we first caught them.
The SECOND day. What happened overnight?
Here’s the pics from a few days ago, below:
(These are the best I could get without disturbing them, since after all the trouble my neighbor and daughter went to making a place they could hang from, they just attached to the top of the milk jug.)
Ahhh, 4pm Friday Afternoon…
It’s 75 degrees south of the City. Sunny and breezy. The kids are gone for the weekend. And I’m trying to decide what to do.
Go to the gym and run 4 miles on the treadmill or kick back with my friend Jack and a Diet Coke?
Hmmm…
The question almost answers itself. Join me won’t you? I need a new game. We drink when Charlie drinks, is over for now. We blew through all 5 seasons of that show. And now we have to wait. It’s like breaking up with a boyfriend. Sad. But, the world keeps spinning, so…
I’ll make mine and you make yours and we’ll just hang out and post silly stuff all over the internets tonight until we can’t type straight.
I’ll go first.
What do you think of when I say, “Giant Spiders” ?
And…..drink! Happy Weekend!
Giant Spider. Giant. Spider. Giant. F-ing. Spider.
Eeewww. Yuk. Creeped out. Goosebumps. Hair standing up. Bleh bleh bleh…. Still.
I almost went into cardiac arrest last night getting up to turn off the light.
The LARGEST. The HAIRIEST. The BLACKEST. The CREEPIEST. Spider I have EVER seen in a house, was on my floor last night. Chilling and reading a magazine. I think I saw a cup of coffee in one of his hands? Claws? Pincers? Yuck. Yuck. And Yuck.
I’m no baby about wildlife. I’m not really afraid of spiders. The concrete slab we live on is full of creatures from the underworld that like to come topside every now and then to remind us that we are NOT alone. Fine. Whatever. But this was NOT a “spider”. This was a SPIDER. Like how a tarantula is a spider. Huge and in its own weight class. Yuck. Just typing it is making me feel all creepy inside.
Ok. So I see it, from across the room. Stop dead. Like not moving. I was immovable. Like stone. I barely looked at the BF to alert him to the situation. He saw it. You really couldn’t miss it. I’d say it was the size of a tealight candle. A black, hairy, tarantula tealight on my beige carpet.
Now, if you don’t think that a tealight is all that big and most likely not scary, try scattering a few of them around on your floor and then decide. And remember: It’s a spider. It can move. Fast. A hairy, black, fast-moving tealight. Yeah. No thanks.
I sneak into the kitchen so it doesn’t see me and get like, 10 papertowels in a bunch, to hand off to the BF. The BF made ONE step toward the spider and it just casually backed into the space between the TV and a speaker. Like, whatever, good luck, you ain’t getting me, I SEE you.
OMG! A spider with acute vision and brains. It’s like a damn hamster. Luckily it had no where to go except back out the front. The BF could see it from the top with a flashlight, just sitting there on the floor. The BF says, “If I just had something to coax it out with, like a stick or something…” Oh, OK. Good idea. I get the backscratcher. Straight, long, even has the curvy, scratch part you can use like a handle!
So the BF puts the stick down into his spider lair and holds the papertowels by the opening between the furniture. (I am way over on the other side of the room, by the kitchen door. I did go get a shoe to smash him with, just in case he made a dash my way, but I wasn’t looking to be a hero.)
I wish I was lying when I say the BF was literally, NUDGING this giant ass spider out between the two walls of the furniture. Nudging it like a mouse or a gerbil or a CAT. Yikes! I’m like, “Can you see it?” He says, “Oh yeah…he’s coming.”
What?!? Oh geez…it’s like pushing a fussy child toward the other kids on the playground. The spider had, like, 6 of his legs all locked down and in fighting stance while the BF is trying to push it out into the open with a back scratching stick that seems woefully too short at this point. The spider was holding onto the stick with his other 2 legs and trying to wrestle it away from the BF. Like tug-of-war, arachnid style. Thank god, I was not home alone. I would have had to go to a hotel or something. There was no way I would have been able to sleep knowing that spider was just hanging out, waiting for it to get dark, so it could come out and crawl on me. I’d throw it a sandwich and get the hell out of there.
Since this is real life and NOT a movie, the humans prevailed. The spider was overpowered; pushed into the light and squeezed to death in a wad of papertowels. I promise you, there was no way I was able to take a picture. I could not stop shaking from the heebie-jeebies. Trust that this spider was huge. No exaggeration. The BF is very level-headed and not prone to over embellishing a story like I might do….and even he said, very casually, “yeah, that’s a pretty big spider…”
So there you have it. A pretty big spider. Pretty dead spider now. I do feel kind of bad though. We had a large spider, (female, I chose to believe at the time–just a guess–nothing scientific), hanging out on our kitchen window. The outside. She had a huge web strung from window to house to eave, and she was just SO big! I felt that a creature that fearsome and strong, that could survive long enough to get that big, deserved to live and be left alone. I would just give the window a WIDE berth when going past to get in the back door. Those kinds of spiders jump when they’re startled and I did not want it jumping on me. Legs out, fangs sinking into my neck. I’d be dead before I even hit the ground from the shock. Mouth open, heart stopped, pants crapped. There wouldn’t even be a sound. She hung around for a few weeks and then she was gone.
At the end of summer last year, we had another large spider hanging off the free standing basketball pole/net thing we have next to the garage. This spider wasn’t so smart, though just as fearsome, and pretty lucky apparently. It was huge, but couldn’t seem to get the hang of stringing a web from the basketball pole to the garage. Too much gap. It finally settled on the garage gutter before it disappeared into winter. This one I took pictures of. I was scared the whole time but I think I captured it’s terrifying essence.
Keep in mind, the pictures are close-up, and against a standard roof top gutter. It is huge. It was huge.
But this one was still SMALLER than the one inside the house. If that was a quarter, again, the one in the house was a TEALIGHT. Wearing pants.
Take a big drink. Swallow. And peek through your fingers at these:
Good Morning, Rainy Thursday!
It’s Thursday. It’s raining. (But it’s one of those nice, rainy, summery mornings that makes you want to curl up on the couch with a good magazine. Books are still a little out of my attention span) First test grade at school is, officially, good. Kids are still sleeping, and my coffee is tasty and hot!
I’ll be taking my son for his 6th grade physical today. Shots! He says he will NOT be a needle-chicken this year! We are betting an El Famous Burrito lunch extravaganza on this. Will we be eating delicious Chicken Quesadillas, Beef Nachos, Chips, Salsa AND Guacamole at 12:30 ish today? Or will we be driving home in rainy, gloomy, summertime shame? Find out later!
I have to go hop in the shower. So for now, please enjoy this light reading about one of my favorite subjects.
10 Ways to Judge Good and Bad Coffee
Terrarium Aquarium
Ecosystem in 2 Liters. Ours for the summer. Ours forever. We have the world, literally, in our hands.
My fans await…
And here I am being lazy all day. Seriously lazy. It’s 3 pm and I am just now up and doing stuff. Too bad too, cause it’s really nice outside. I probably could have done tons more.
I’m adding a warning right here, before I get a call from my sister telling me how lame and annoying I am:
This post contains a long, possibly boring narrative of my days and nights since Saturday morning, before the party. Proceed with caution (and a drink for maximum enjoyment, I recommend the Vodka Mixer, but only if you’re over 21. Please drink responsibly.) if you continue. I cannot be held accountable for what you think is funny or not. End of warning.
I was awake at 10 am. And I had coffee and watched tv. I checked my e-mail because the kids both got their own e-mail accounts and they like to send messages and videos and chat back and forth even though we are all in the same house. It’s really fun. They send an e-mail, hand me the computer, I open my e-mail, read and reply, and hand the computer back to them. Only kids can give you this kind of entertainment.
Anyway, as luck would have it, they are at their dads right now (which is why I can lay around until 10 am in bed on a Monday. School is over for them and mine is on Tuesday’s) so since they are actually out of the house I knew there would be messages. And there were. Checked and replied. Drink more coffee. Watch a movie.
Ladies, (or guys), if you are going to cheat on your spouse, watch this movie first: Clash By Night
It’s surprisingly violent and straightforward. I flipped it on thinking that old movies sometimes are the best on days like this. And I was right. The poster and IMDB kind of make it seem like a Marilyn picture, but it’s not. It’s about love and the giant mess it makes when you get married, and have kids, and have lovers and families and live by that sexy ocean when it’s hot outside…but judge for yourself…that could be the Bailey’s talking.
After the movie, I decided that a shower might be nice. I was kind of hungry too, but way to lazy to make anything or even go out to get something. So I did all the personal hygiene stuff I like to do when the kids and BF are gone, played some Pocket Poker (lost everything) and moved onto the mail and the couch. It’s windy and keeps trying to rain. I wish it would because then I don’t have to feel guilty about sitting inside like a hermit.
After the paperwork I had to do was done, I moved onto laundry, and vacuuming. This is gripping reading I know. (Shut up! Aman-duh!) I am just now getting the house back to it’s pre-party condition. Not that there was a big mess or anything. My sisters and family toatally helped clean up! Thank you! I just like to remove our daily living paraphernalia from the public view. But, you have to put it all back because you find out you need it at hand. Stuff like, my food journal, and bills, and magazines and school books, things like that.
Speaking of the party…it was good. Really good I thought. Party was scheduled to start at 2 pm. It rained at exactly 2 pm.
But then it stopped and warmed up just enough for everyone to go outside. I’d say a majority of those invited actually came. Very successful. You never know with these kinds of things. You want the party to NOT be a disaster. It’s really all you can hope for. The food arrived, everyone ate, drank, socialized, and left. Last people out were my sisters. 11 pm ish, I think. Not bad at all.
Sunday morning was raining a bit. Mason had grass to cut. Another job! Then we went to the movies. Land of the Lost
It’s not bad. But it’s not worth paying full price unless you really LOVE Will Ferrell. There are some really funny parts and some that just aren’t. Also, alot of swearing and jokes and visuals that might be a little too adult for the younger crowd. Mine are 10 and 11 and I was cringing a few times and working up the explanations in my head.
We had a gift card so it wasn’t too bad. The food cost more than the admission! Bleah! Then we motored the children on over to their daddy’s. The BF and I watched Mr and Mrs Smith for the gazillionth time, ate food and hit the sack. And here I sit today.
Laundry is cooking, books are waiting, pictures need posting…I could spice up the story with some sordid little details about how I earned a buck-oh-two on Saturday night, or what vodka, 7-up and bags of ice brought to the party Sunday night, but I bet you can think of a million better things than I could come up with, including the truth. This site is interactive! YOU tell ME and I’ll let you know if you’re close.
Which reminds me, my brothers favorite movie is coming on tv soon. You can’t handle the truth! At least I think it still is. I personally don’t care for the “Jack” myself but I try to be nice. I prefer his other favorite Keyser Söze. I’m not sure why, but if it’s on tv I watch it, no matter where in the story or what time it is. I’ve watched it at 4 in the morning on Christmas Eve. Why is it even on at that time?? It’s a sickness.
Alright look around for some pictures. I have more stuff to come, including a caterpillar update. What are those crazy cocoons up to?? You know you want to know.
Find out! Later!
just shy of pretty 