The myths!

The myths are out! Our caddies have slowly been coming out of their cocoons! Well, not exactly SLOWLY.. It started Thursday evening, I saw Shadow, our black cat, looking into the caterpillar keeper with great interest. I watched him for a moment, wondering what he could be looking at, since the keeper had nothing but sticks, dried leaves and many cocoons. I went and took a peek and, lo and behold, we had moths! OK. One moth. He was all dry and ready to fly and just chilling on the roof of his home. I left him for the night so the kids could see him in the morning. We let him go the next morning. That day, two more came out of their cocoons. But we kept missing the show! I'd find them all dry and ready to go. Determined to catch one in the act of coming out of his cocoon, I started checking their keeper every 10 minutes. I was like a crazed moth woman or something. But we were rewarded today! One we watched one as he came out of his cocoon and one right after he emerged, as he climbed his way up to dry.

I took some pictures:


Rachael displaying the moths that we found who had recently come out.


After neurotically watching the keeper for a couple hours, I was finally rewarded with a moth emerging! We found out it takes about 15 minutes for them to come out of the cocoon. They wiggle a bit, then rest, then repeat. As soon as this guy was free, he scrambled up the stick to dry.


Daniel (Trevor's friend) took this picture. I told the kids a moth was emerging, an everyone came in to check it out. It took the moth about 30 minutes to dry off. They vibrate their wings intermittently as they dry, and then again before they are ready to fly away.


Trevor took this picture of one as it was drying. When his wings are completely dry, they fold down and not up like that.

So our caterpillars are all grown up! And, regardless of the fact that they are pests that devour trees, they are darn cute and caddies and moths!