Turning parsley into butterflies

A few weeks back, we noticed the fat­test, coolest look­ing cater­pil­lar (or “caler­pit­ter” as our four-year-old calls them) on our Ital­ian pars­ley. We’d decided to grow the pars­ley because it was easy and cheap, and once we put it in pots on the deck (away from the bun­nies) it flour­ished. The cater­pil­lar was so cool, we did a bunch of research (they are swal­low­tail but­ter­fly cater­pil­lars, and they love pars­ley) and had just decided to build a cater­pil­lar cage when… it dis­ap­peared. (Eaten by a bird, we think.)

Never fear, the three pots of pars­ley had plenty of cater­pil­lars hatch­ing on them. In a few days, all three pots were down to nubs, and there were five or eight or fif­teen cater­pil­lars on them. So we put the cage together (two pie plates, some small-hole mesh, baby food jars with water and pars­ley, and some sticks for cocoon­ing), put it on our screened in porch, and started mov­ing cater­pil­lars. We started with just two, but even­tu­ally felt for the lit­tle guys on their pars­ley sticks, and moved ten more into shelter.

We’ve been feed­ing them, clean­ing their cage, watch­ing them, and mov­ing the chrysalises out to a pot where the but­ter­flies would have enough room to dry their wings.

And today, the first of them hatched. Once she starts to flut­ter about, we’ll have to cor­ral her and let her out of the porch, where she can try to find more pars­ley (good luck) or get eaten by a bird.