If you find yourself with five butterflies, here’s what will happen.
- They will all emerge from the chrysalis while you are sleeping or looking away just for a moment.
- Then, they will sit apathetically for a day.
- Then, you will feed them sugar-dipped universalis flowers, which they will shun.
- After the wings are formed, the extra color is excreted from the tail of the butterfly. Essentially, your butterfly menstruates all over its mesh habitat. A lot. Peri-menopausal amounts.
- In a desperate attempt to make them eat, you buy mandarin oranges and throw them to the creatures.
- Butterflies love mandarin oranges. They get high and fly against the mesh walls.
- Then, you open the door and only two butterflies make a break for it.
- The next day, two more decide to leave and go to butterfly college.
- Finally, the runt extrudes an ocean of extra color all over the habitat. Ten times more than the others combined.
So, the runt remains. It’s been an interesting experiment. Who would think butterflies would be so dramatic?
5 responses to “Butterflies are Free to Fly”
We have a butterfly house here at our botanical garden and they have windows where you can watch the butterfly hatch… never knew all that about the color-bleeding thing, tho’! Bizarre. Who knew there was so much to know about butterflies? I think that’s really cool that you did that and got them to full term. Bravo!
Yikes!Drama plus.
Ick, they poo rainbows? That’s kind of poetic and gross all at once!
It’s the menstruating thing that got me. Now that I haven’t been doing it for, like, ten years, it seems unbelievably gross to me. Eww.
sue -I know! I was so afraid the runt would die. He finally left the house today. He didn’t fly off, I just finally had to set the butterfly house outside and bring it back in later. I checked his/her color before I did it -it looked good, maybe his color stash was normal-size and he was small.
Judith – just wait. Next I might try mating them.
AmyinStL – they do crap sunshine and kittens and rainbows.
It made me wonder – the color was red, and these are brown and red Painted Lady butterflies. Do Monarchs bleed orange? Do somne bleed blue and yellow?
I’m going to find out.