Sometime in April, 2020

A friend on Facebook posts a link saying, “Don’t forget to order your butterfly kits!” I’m, like, “Thanks for the reminder!” even though I’ve never heard of this before. I click on the link.

April or May, 2020

I call my mom and tell her about the butterfly kit. She says, “Are you sure that you’ll be okay? You’re not still too traumatized by what happened when you were little?” I assure her that things will be different this time because I know for sure that these are definitely butterflies.

Spring sometime in the 1980s

I’m four or five years old and playing in the park with my friend Kristy. She’s a few years older than me and way cooler, but she’s always super nice to me anyways.

When we move towards the swing set, we find two caterpillars and decide to adopt them. I name my caterpillar Kristy and Kristy also names her caterpillar Sara after me.

May 11, 2020

I get an email from the butterfly place that my kit has shipped. Hurray!

May 14, 2020

I check the tracking and see that the kit will not arrive for another week. I start worrying about the butterfly maggots. Maybe ordering a box of living things during a pandemic was a mistake. Will my butterfly maggots die? I make a post on Facebook asking if they will die. My friend who initially posted about the kits assures me that they also pack food and the butterfly maggots will not die.

1980-something

When I get home with Kristy the caterpillar, I put it in a jar with some grass and leaves and sticks. At this young age, I am not concerned about whether or not this will be a good life for my caterpillar. It is also not the last time that I’ll keep a pet in a jar or in a plastic yogurt container.

May 16, 2020

My friend Melissa sends me a message saying that she got her butterfly kit and that the caterpillars seem to have plenty of food. She thinks that mine will be okay. I thank her for letting me know.

I am relieved that I am getting caterpillars (oooh, fancy) and not maggots (gross!)

May 18, 2020

Wait, why did I think that I was getting maggots in the mail?

Back to the 1980s

Well, the day has finally arrived. I wake up to find a cocoon inside of my jar instead of a caterpillar. Kristy the caterpillar is safely inside the cocoon where she’s busy transforming into a beautiful butterfly. I can’t wait to see the butterfly.

My mom tries to tell me that it might be a moth instead of a butterfly, but I don’t listen to her.

May 20, 2020

It is the day after my kit was supposed to arrive and the shipping info says “Expected delivery: date pending.” The position of the dot on the tracker thingy has changed.

Maybe I’ll get chrysaliseseses instead of caterpillars. That would be a better scenario than a box of dead caterpillars at least.

May 21, 2020

May 22, 2020

My husband tells me about the time he wanted to copyright some stories that he had written, so he sent them to himself in the mail. The package took ten years to arrive. Ten. YEARS. That’s how long it took Odysseus to get home after the Trojan War ffs.

1980s

The next time I see Kristy at the park, I excitedly tell her about the cocoon. I ask her if her caterpillar spun a cocoon too, and she tells me that Sara the caterpillar has died.

May 28, 2020

A box has arrived on my porch.

My son and I open the box and I pull out the container of caterpillars. My son sees one moving. I open the lid and it turns out that most of them are moving!

Three of the caterpillars immediately try to escape. Two appear to have formed chrysalises and then fallen into the food. One of them is not moving and is probably dead. 😦

One of the caterpillars is chilling out on the towel at the top ready to form a chrysalis, but the instructions inform me that it’s important to change the towel when they arrive. I do this and the chrysalis-ready caterpillar hangs out on the new towel, as do the three wannabe escape artists who are all like, “Ermagawwwwwd this is so exciting!!!!1”

A few hours later, two of the caterpillars are hanging upside down and are ready for chrysalis making.

May 29

Four caterpillars have formed chrysalises overnight, including the one that I thought was dead! That one is still laying in the food. The other three are hanging from the towel. Only one caterpillar remains.

May 30, 2020

The caterpillars are now all in their chrysalises. The last caterpillar knocked one of the chrysalises down and took its spot. I guess it really, really, really wanted that spot.

June 1, 2020

My son and I move the chrysalises to a super fancy butterfly enclosure, aka an old laundry basket. I cover up a few holes with tape; I never worried about my laundry escaping.

Three chrysalises are hanging safely from the paper towel that we have carefully pinned to the ceiling of their new home. As I’m moving the others, I end up finding more chrysalises buried in the caterpillar food. I place them all on a paper towel and hope for the best.

June 2, 2020

The instructions say to mist the chrysalises because they need some humidity. I follow these instructions diligently and the tape falls away from the holes. I decide to just worry about it once the butterflies come out.

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I check on Kristy the butterfly every day. One morning I go and look at the cocoon as usual and find that Kristy has finally come out of her cocoon. She isn’t a butterfly, though. She’s a big, scary, ferocious moth. I scream and scream and scream. My mother releases the moth as I continue to scream. “Why are children?” she probably thinks to herself as she watches the moth fly away.

June, 2020

I have since learned that moth caterpillars make cocoons and butterfly caterpillars make chrysalises. I decide to look into this more while I’m waiting for the butterflies to emerge. I read that moths spin their cocoons with silk, which I already knew. What I didn’t know was that butterfly caterpillars shed their skin and the chrysalis is already underneath their skin. I don’t know why, but I’m a bit creeped out by this information.

June 8, 2020

The first two butterflies are coming out! They’re from the chrysalises on the ground.

I am worried about the first one because I’m not sure if it only has one wing or if the other wing is still inside the chrysalis. In a few days it will turn out to be okay and then a couple of days later it will die; the one in the video breaking out of the chrysalis is not able to get out all the way. 😦

June 9

Four more butterflies appear when nobody is looking (two from the ceiling chrysalises and two from the floor chrysalises.) They are all doing great!

It looks like their wings are bigger than the holes in the laundry basket so I decide to leave them.

June 11

My husband is sitting on the couch reading when a butterfly flies past his face.

When I get out of the shower, we try to get the butterfly back in the laundry basket (the day is too windy to let them go). It escapes and flies around the living room for a bit before we’re successful.

I take the opportunity to patch the holes in the laundry basket.

While I’m at an appointment, the last ceiling butterfly comes out of its chrysalis. I return and see that there is still a butterfly in the glass and another one is trying to join it. I am worried that they will hurt themselves on the hard glass. I decide to remove the glass and four butterflies escape. My husband and I frantically trap them in smaller plastic cups and get them back into the laundry basket.

If I ever do this again, I will definitely get a real butterfly house.

June 15, 2020

It’s a warm and sunny day. After having a few very windy days, today seems like a good day to release the butterflies. We slide a piece of cardboard under the upside down laundry basket and bring it outside.

The butterflies sit in the sun for a couple minutes before they realize that they can fly away. They fly a short distance away and rest on the grass for awhile before leaving for good.

One butterfly is reluctant to leave. We coax it out of the basket with a piece of watermelon.

I gently place the watermelon on the ground. When the butterfly has had its fill, it curls its proboscis up daintily, takes a step onto the grass, and then stays there for an hour. We sit with it and wait. We wave a few mosquitoes away. The mail carrier passes by. A moth crawls on my son’s leg and he doesn’t freak out because he’s eleven and not four.

We decide to go in, but before we do, we get the butterfly to crawl onto a stick so we can move it to a more sheltered spot.

I check on it periodically and see that it’s still there, but in a few hours it is gone.

In case you are interested, I ordered the butterfly kit from Education Station in Alberta . You can only get them in the spring though, and butterfly season is over for the y