An Unexpected Gift

One morning in August, I opened the shades to the back door and was surprised to see a monarch caterpillar crawling along the top of the door (a surprise, because my butterfly garden was a joke this year, lingering somewhere between life and death most summer long).

My son and I admired it, and then I got crazy and suggested we catch it and keep it in a jar. We found a suitable jar and then filled it with grass and a stick (a must for every bug jar). We named it "Antennae", and the jar spent the rest of the afternoon on the floor where my son was playing- so the little caterpillar wouldn't be lonely. Get this. I even I printed out a coloring page of the Butterfly Life Cycle and had my son color it (Whoa, girl!). I wasn't quite sure what to expect from Antennae. I figured he would go the way of every other bug that gets put in a jar. But then something miraculous happened. That evening, Antennae spun a platform and hung from the top of our jar.

The next day he became a cocoon (I learned their cocoon is actually their exoskeleton) and there he hung for the next 10 days. My son and I regularly checked up on him and talked about how exciting it would be to see him turn into a butterfly. That day came quicker then we expected. One afternoon, I checked on the little guy only to find that he had emerged from his coccon a full grown butterfly. We moved him into a bigger jar, and waited for Daddy to come home to release him.

My son was a little sad to see his "pet" take flight, but we were grateful for the time he shared with us. I felt like Mother of the Year for providing such a hands on learning opportunity for my son, esecially because it was such a spontaneous event. We just caught a bug. You have to be grateful for gifts like that.