Lawrence's Butterflies

One of Lawrence's birthday presents where some butterfly eggs.

They started out as tiny caterpillars and ate the food that had been sent with caterpillars. It was a nettle paste. When they got bigger they crawled onto the top of the lid of the container.

We expected them to start weaving themselves into a cocoon but instead one of their heads fell of.

    We realized that their own skin had formed kind of cocoon called a chrysalis.

When they came out of their chrysalis 

they were butterflies!

Here are some photos.

The black one hasn't come out yet. The white ones are empty.

This one is on Lawrence's arm.

We put the butterflies in a special tent that is made from transparent netting. In the tent they could fly around and we could watch them up close. At first we tried to feed them sugar water but they would not eat. Then I discovered that they really liked orange juice. I squeezed orange juice into real flowers and they really enjoyed that. We could see the proboscis sucking up the juice as though they were using a straw.

After a few days we set them free to go find some new friends.