Sunday, April 14, 2013

Helping some friends move

If you all remember, Pooka's caterpillars went into their chrysalis about mid week. Pooka was so excited and wished them all goodnight. Well I got the directions out that day and did some reading.

It turns out that the cup is not suppose to move the first day or our friends went to sleep. Apparently no one told the cats this since Daddy did say the first night he had found the container on the floor. That explains all the chrysalises being in their food.

The caterpillars fell out of bed
Once everyone is comfy, you need to wait a day or 2 before you move the paper disk so the shells can harden some. I gave it 3 to be safe and then Saturday afternoon, Pooka, Grandma K and I moved the paper disk and pin it to the side of the nylon habitat that our butterflies.

Moving our easy friend
Sadly that was the easy one to move. The rest were on the bottom of the container in their own waste. Fun. I refused to pick them up by hand because I was afraid to squish them, so I grabbed a pair of chop sticks and move the other three. I would not be surprised if at least one of them didn't make it, since it didn't look the same. These guys got put on a paper towel at the bottom of the habitat.
Add 3 more to the container.
Once I had them all in, the top was zipped and they were put on the top of my desk to finish growing. It says to keep them out of direct sunlight and any real breezes, so this should be a good place. I don't have a picture of it, sorry about that.
Hello Runt
What happenned to our little runty caterpillar? He is still growing strong. He is about the size of the other ones were we got them, so I left him in the food container (yes, I know its rather nasty in there). Since we had taken out the paper disk for him to attach too, I asked Pooka to get a stick from her collection. We broke it in pieces to place in their for him. He seems plenty happy with that, and maybe it will be easier to move. At his current growth rate, he should be going to sleep about the time we release his friends, so maybe Pooka won't miss the others as well. The extra bits of stick we broke and put in the nylon habitat for our little friends to crawl on once they wake up. Now we wait and see what happens.

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