Our Caterpillars

On September 26th we went over to our friend/old neighbor's house to gather some caterpillars.  You may not be able to tell very well...

but if you compare those trees to this one, you can see that they were being eaten alive by an amazing amount of caterpillars.

If you were very quiet, you could even hear them munching - there were THAT many!

Of course, we went over to collect some because I thought it would be fun to watch them change.  So we put them in an old container and loaded it with fresh leaves every day.

Only a couple of days later, we found this HUGE guy in our own backyard!

So we put him in the "pet corner" of our house along with the others.  

(He wasn't around too long though.  Only long enough for me to figure out that he was a tomato bug and with our tomato plants, I didn't want to welcome it's babies into our yard!)

Meanwhile, some of our other caterpillars immediately made these webby little cocoon type things on the bottom of the container and didn't move again.

But, the others munched for a couple of weeks...

before forming their chrysalises.

Then, just a couple of weeks after the chrysalises appeared, a little moth came out!! (Oct. 19th)

We had just put Emily to bed when I discovered him, so I ran in to get her back up.

We took him outside, opened the top...

and set him free.

The next day I realized that our first moth had emerged from a little cocoon that I found on the leaf of our tomato plant (after it was already formed) and had placed in our caterpillar condo.

But, five days later, our original caterpillars started coming out and did so for several days.

It was a great learning experience for Emily and I found it fascinating as well.  When we returned from our Thanksgiving trip, I dismantled the caterpillar jar and got some close pictures of the empty cocoon...

 and chrysalises.

Glad we could be a part of your journey, little moths!