Set them Free.....

We decided to raise Painted Ladies again this year. As our usual neglectful selves, they went into their chrysalis without us even realizing. Once they are hanging from the top of the little cup they arrive in, you are supposed tape the lid to the top of a sort of netted cage. I had the cup sitting on the counter and true to my 'living thing' nature, I accidentally knocked it onto the floor, dislodging all of the chrysali. Sigh. (For those of you who are just joining my killing things escapades see my Silk Worm post in this blog).

Well I was sure I had killed them all so I picked up the cup and set it on the counter to throw away when I got around to it. We were getting ready for church and Payton said, "Hey mom, the butterflies are out!" Sure enough, those resilient little bugs were all alive. I assumed they would have damaged wings (did I mentioned stuff like this has happens before, not this extreme but we have had fallen chrysali before- hence the knowledge of broken wings)

The butterfly people guarantee that 3 out of the 5 will 'hatch' or they send you a new batch. We are pretty good at meeting the bare minimum alive. Get this, all 5 of these guys made it. Maybe my pathetic attempts to keep previous batches alive kept them from gaining their resilience. Maybe I have been doing this all wrong. Maybe the key to helping things survive in the real world is to not help them at all.- maybe even make it really difficult 'survival of the fittest' and the best way to get them fit is have them working for survival from day one.

We set them free today while the girls had some friends over. One of the butterflies wasn't ready. He wouldn't fly away so we put him back into the net. This maybe a lesson in life for me. Even under the worst of conditions, some things don't want to fly away. (Seriously you guys, one of the oranges I put in there for them had even molded). So we still have the slacker butterfly. If we really want to get rid of him, we will turn over his neglectful care to Alex. Then we will see how fast he wants to fly away! :)