Here There and Everywhere

“The Circle of Death”

Every now and then, AdventureMan and I are talking about life issues, and I will say something about it all being a part of the Circle of Life, and he, ever the cynic, will say “That’s another way of saying The Circle of Death.” It makes me laugh when he says it, but it sort of illustrates a difference in the way we think. I anticipate a happy outcome – and for the most part, I may go through some unhappiness, but the outcome is generally happy. AdventureMan anticipates the worst outcome, and is always happily suprised when things come out well. 🙂

Today, I don’t know how he is going to handle the circle.

His first chrysalllis was set around last Saturday, i.e. a fat caterpillar crawled off the milkweed where he had been born and had feasted a couple weeks. He became a bright, shiny green drop, but you could sort of see where his feet used to be, and you could watch things happening inside, like wings starting to form.

We don’t know where some of the catarpillars went. We know there were six or seven, and maybe some of them crawled off to cryssalize somewhere else. The second chrysallis was malformed; we knew it wasn’t going to turn into a butterfly. Maybe it was a normal defect, maybe a bird had pecked it or a wasp had laid an egg inside.

Yesterday, we watched the third caterpillar who had attached. Just an hour and a half after this photo was taken, he turned into that bright green container that the first had turned into.

As I was fixing dinner, I could swear I saw the first chrysallis moving, and I thought it was hatching, but AM thinks I was just imagining something, and that might be.

Today, both the deformed chrysallis and the two perfect chrysallis are gone. I saw a small bird on the wheelbarrow yesterday, and it might be that the birds like to feast on the chrysallis.

Poor AdventureMan. His babies got run over by the circle of death. (I prefer to think that the first one hatched into a Monarch butterfly, but it is unlikely that is what happened to the other two, so this time, this one rare occasion, AdventureMan may be right . . . )

October 12, 2011 - Posted by intlxpatr | Adventure, Experiment, Gardens, Living Conditions, Pensacola