Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Witnessing God's Amazing Creation
A friend from church {thanks, M!} graciously brought us some of her many monarch caterpillars! We have had so much fun watching them! We started with six caterpillars - and everyone got in on naming them: Chewy {above}, Tiny, Hope, Mr. Five, Mr. Six, and Coon {our first cocoon}.
It was so exciting to go out and see how they had grown, how much they had eaten, who had crawled away and we hunted for cocoons which we never found. But, we did have two make cocoons right on our plant on the porch where we could have a front row seat in watching the action!
The Butterfly Weed was welcoming to our caterpillars, but also to several other fun visitors that you'll see pictured. Day two - we ran out quickly in the morning to count and make sure everyone was there - two had wandered off and we never did find them. Right after breakfast we went back out and this brand new cocoon was hanging here! This cocoon was never quite right unfortunately and turned brown and died. But wait until you see what we got to see!
Rachel took a special interest in caring for them - especially Hope - this is not Hope in the photo above, I think this is Chewy! Hope never was super happy on our plant, she would not eat and just kept getting smaller. It was very sad. But Rachel sat by her and rubbed her and talked to her and just generally did her best to cheer and care for her. It was SO sweet and also heartbreaking to watch all at once. Below is Rachel with an ever shriveling Hope:
By the third evening, Hope was gone and Rachel cried and cried in sorrow over her lost friend. We found a little box that she laid her peacefully to rest in, such a tender heart:
Part Two on Thursday ...