Stripey: the miraculous transformation

About half a month ago, my little brother Nathan brought home a tiny monarch caterpillar (about the size of an inchworm) that he had found on our neighbor's milkweed plants.  We had had a monarch caterpillar before and had creatively named it Stripey, so Nathan's caterpillar was Stripey James.  Stripey James ate like crazy, and in a week or so he had at least doubled in size!  Soon, he crawled up to the top of his cage and made some sort of spiderweb thing.  To this he attached something else, to which he attached himself (I am a little unclear on the details), after which he hung upside down in a 'J' shape: a sign that he would soon become a chrysalis.

Stripey James hung there all that day.  The next morning, someone in our family noticed that Stripey was hanging straighter, and that his antennae were hanging limp, and from reading about monarch caterpillars we knew that something was going to happen.  We all gathered around the cage.  There, before our eyes, Stripey became a chrysalis!  It was an extraordinary feat: you see, monarchs shed their skin four times, which is the signal for them to do that whole J thing described so vaguely in the first paragraph.  Once they are hanging there, they shed their skin one last time.  This time, instead of still looking like a caterpillar, they come out all green, and their legs and antennae come off, too (disgusting, I know - it wasn't quite as bad as it sounds)!  Stripey, being a monarch caterpillar, did this very thing.  After a couple of hours, he began to look more chrysalis-like.  At the end of the day, the caterpillar was gone, and all that was left to show that he had ever been there was a beautiful green chrysalis, hanging from the top of the cage.

For 11 days Stripey stayed in the chrysalis.  Then, as we were getting ready to leave for church this past Sunday, I noticed that there was a butterfly in the cage!  Unfortunately, we missed this last emergence (I think that's a word...), but it was still so amazing to see that caterpillar become something so different!  When butterflies first come out of their chrysalises they are all fat with some sort of fluid.  They then pump this fluid into their wings, which are all squished up, to make them so large and beautiful!  It was too bad that we missed this, but seeing the caterpillar become a chrysalis was already such a treat that we were not too dissapointed.

We gave Stripey some sugar water, and after mass we let him go.  Nathan put his finger down into the cage and Stripey crawled onto it for one last good-bye before flying off high into the tree-tops.  The whole thing was so incredible!  I think that no atheist can ever have watched a monarch caterpillar become a butterfly.

Stripey in a 'J'

                                                                                    

Stripey as a butterfly!