Butterflies

During the jumble life was during our move last year, Portia never got to use the butterfly habitat she got for her fifth birthday party. We found it about a month ago, and sent in for our five free caterpillars. When they arrived in the mail, each of us chose a caterpillar and named it, but honestly, none of us knew which was which except for one: Bianca's little caterpillar, Bobby Z. Bobby Z was our runt. When all the other caterpillars grew huge in the next couple of days, Bobby Z remained small. She was eating, but she was definitely no where near the others. When the other four caterpillars made their chrysalises, Bobby Z was just starting to put on some weight. The day the other four caterpillars emerged, Bobby Z made her chrysalis. We released Willamina Titania, Minion, Teresa, and Kyle Van Osum the day after they emerged as beautiful Painted Lady butterflies.

A full week later, Bobby Z began to emerge from the chrysalis. And then disaster struck. She was stuck, inside her chrysalis and couldn't get out. Her wings started twisting and ripping and she just couldn't make it out. We googled and saw that spraying a mist of water might help, which we tried, but to no avail. I knew butterflies only lived a couple weeks, so we decided we'd just keep her as she was and take really good care of her, make her comfortable. We kept bringing in fresh flowers and dripping sugar water on top (the girls loved doing this). We cut fresh slices of orange for her. And she was happy. But not really, because her destiny was to fly. She would perch on our fingers, and we were careful not hurt her already ripped wings. Once we took her outside, and instinct took over. She flapped herself into a frenzy trying to do what she was meant to do--fly away and lay her eggs. We started to love that little hurt butterfly.

I noticed a couple days before we had to leave on our trip that Bobby Z wasn't moving as much. The day we were packing up our suitcases, she passed on. Bianca surrounded her with her favorite flowers (the pink) and buried her quietly in the earth.