Last fall, I stumbled across the website for All-a-Flutter butterfly farm in High Point. It sounded neat and we planned to go, but the weather didn't cooperate.
So this year, I started planning early. The weather was beautiful one Saturday, so we got up early and drove to the farm. It was not what I expected. We drove down a long dirt driveway and ended up in someone's front yard. There were maybe 15 or 20 other cars, so we paid our money and went in.
Everyone there gathered in a tiny amphitheater for an entertaining, educational demonstration on butterflies. It was funny and geared toward kids, but I learned things, too. Like butterflies hear with their knees and smell with their antennae. The kids got to participate in showing the stages of the caterpillar, chrysalis (not a cocoon, those are for moths) and butterfly.
The farm had a giant mesh-covered butterfly garden; it looked like a greenhouse but with screens. There were hundreds of butterflies inside on flowering plants. We spent time waiting our turn to go inside the garden looking at caterpillars on milkweed plants.
Sawyer was eager to get inside, and finally it was our turn. People had to enter and exit carefully so the butterflies didn't escape. Many were trying to catch a ride on visitors' bags and hair, but the butterfly wrangler would grab them and put them back in the house.
When it was out turn, they gave us a small cotton pad soaked in sugar water to attract the butterflies. Sawyer had extra attraction powers, though; he'd eaten a doughnut on the way and was covered in sugar glaze.
He was interested in the butterflies, and some landed on him. But he quickly became more interested in the water fountain in the garden and wanted to play in it.
I was fascinated with the display that showed caterpillars ready to go into the chrysalis and rows of chrysalises with butterflies about to emerge.
I was so captivated by them that I bought two milkweed plants. They were on clearance for $2 because it was the end of the season. I chose ones that had big fat caterpillars on them, so we returned home with four wild pets.
For about two weeks, I obsessed over my new kids, checking on them in the backyard several times a day. Finally one of them started hanging in a J shape, the precursor to a chrysalis. The chrysalis came a few days later. It was like Christmas for me. Sawyer was excited, too. When I showed it to him, I asked him what it was and he said, "It's a chrysalis!" I was surprised he remembered such a big word without any coaching.
It was very hard to photograph because the bush kept shaking.
Sadly, this story has a sad ending. Two of my caterpillars disappeared early on. Another one lived for several weeks, munching on milkweed. But he died before building his chrysalis. And my miraculous one that built a chrysalis was murdered when Hank got too close to the bush and whacked it with his tail. The chrysalis is built to be tough, but it couldn't withstand that much shaking.
It made me sad for days, but it made me decide we'd definitely try this again some day. It truly was magical to watch.
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