Story of a Orange Dog Swallowtail Butterfly

It amazes me every single time we do this. How a bug can go from a teeny tiny egg, to a not so attractive caterpillar to a beautiful butterfly.   I have always KNOWN the life cycle of a butterfly, but to actually witness it....it's a totally different story. One I never tire of seeing happen.  I am grateful that we homeschool. These are the kinds of projects I don't think I would take on if we didn't.

 One day, I was inspecting our satsuma tree to make sure that it was doing ok. I noticed it was being literally eaten alive!  I found two beautiful caterpillars on it. I knew that they were special caterpillars...I knew that they were moths.  In the rain, Raelee, her friend and I grabbed the two that we found and brought them in and put them in our special Daddy made bug cage.  Raelee looked them up in her caterpillar/butterfly book and found out that they were Orange Dog Swallowtail Butterflies.  They are quite famous for destroying entire crops of citrus tree's (hence the name).  I can see why. Those two caterpillars would have stripped my tree had I not gone out to do a leaf check when I did.  

We were thrilled to find them and add them to our bug cage. They quickly went into cocoon and emerged 4 and 6 weeks later..respectively.  For the next several days, we found tiny baby Swallowtail larvae and also eggs. We tried to raise them when we found them (I couldn't leave them on my tree to eat it all...but I didn't have the heart to outwardly kill them...look at what we would have missed if we had done that!) but only the original two lived to adulthood.

Here is an egg that has yet to hatch. It is about the size of a pen point.

Tiny baby Swallowtail. It was about an eight of an inch in length. We were interested to learn that the first thing they ate was their shell that they hatched from. I'll bet it had lots of nutrients!

"Grown up larvae"  It was rather large and long. About the size of my pinky finger. One of it's defense mechanisms is that it looks like bird poop on a stick. I could see that working for this bug!

These horns came out when they felt threatened. They are scent glands...man did they stink!

They curled up, ran their silky strings that help suspend them and got really still.

It wasn't long before they went into their cocoons. They looked just like the end of a broken stick!

A few weeks later, a beautiful butterfly emerged!  See how big 'she' is? I love the patterns on her.

The underside looked totally different. Look at the blue's and ornages!

It wasn't long before we had to say goodbye!

See her right in the middle of the circle?  You REALLY have to look!

It amazes me each and every time we do this that a critter can go from something SO small and 'ugly' to something so completely beautiful in a matter of weeks. I really wish I could see the transformation take place inside the cocoon. I can only imagine what I would see. So much happens in that few short weeks. It really is amazing to think about.

We are in the process of growing milkweed so that we can order some monarch larvae.  With any luck, we won't have to order it..maybe we'll walk outside and find it already on our plant! That would be so neat!!!