Oh, those butterflies...

We are witness to so much miracle these days...our second monarch caterpillar, Wee Willy Winky, who was no longer so wee, but didn't seem to mind the name, hung his "J", and we were fortunate to notice when his skin began to peel back to reveal this beauty underneath.  I love this picture, because he has not hardened into the chrysalis yet, and you can see the caterpillar form at the top, and the chrysalis and maybe the start of the wings below.

And "J-man" emerged from his chrysalis a robust healthy, gorgeous butterfly.  Here you can see the empty chrysalis hanging in the foreground of the picture.
Here is "J-man" (does anyone else name their guest caterpillars??) as a butterfly, and Wee Willy as a chrysalis.
Here is one enraptured little girl...

I have to confess that after we had let him go, shortly before bedtime, I snuck back outside to see how he was doing.  After finding him just a foot or two from where we had last seen him, I decided that it was too late in the day, it was too wet outside, he hadn't had any nourishment, how was he going to survive the twittering squeaking swallows I could hear overhead? So I brought him back inside (it was one of those things:  ok, if he walks onto my finger right away, it's a sign that he wants to go back inside...if he doesn't, I promise I'll let nature take its course) to spend the night with some smooshed banana and melon in our butterfly house.  His release the next morning was much more successful, he was more active, and I felt better about giving his wings a bit more time to dry!  I also was just not done looking at him, and I learned  a few new things about butterflies...I had forgotten that their proboscis is in two parts that "zip" together to form the straw-like tube that they suck the nectar up.  I think I saw him stretching these in his first moments and it was Dan who figured out what those extra things were on his face (he used to work in the butterfly house at the Pacific Science Center and knows a thing or two about butterflies).  I learned that this guy was a guy - he had small black spots on the black lines of his lower wings, which are scent patches that emit the pheromones to attract a mate.  I also learned that you can usually only see four legs on a butterfly, but that they really have six (which is what I would have expected - this also factored into my recapture of J-man - I felt responsible for his success and he only had FOUR LEGS, for crying out loud; was I going to send him to the swallows unprepared??); the front two stay folded up close to their bodies. 

I feel so lucky that we were here this weekend to see these changes, to have this experience to talk about together, to wonder what it must feel like to go through those changes, to marvel at the wonder of it all...