Change is good

This spring my mother brought me a flat of herbs for my garden. We have enjoyed them all summer long: fresh basil for our tomatoes, oregano and thyme for our pasta sauces, chives for our baked potatoes. But I was having a hard time finding any useful purpose for the fennel scented dill - a hybrid of sorts that may be better in concept than reality. A few weeks ago, however, I discovered that a very large and colorful caterpillar with gourmet taste had consumed nearly half the plant. Sawyer had recently taken home a bug box as a birthday party favor so I trimmed a twig off the plant and placed the caterpillar in the bug box thinking about how much Sawyer would enjoy looking at a real live Very Hungry Caterpillar:


For two days the thing ate and pooped up a storm - seriously, you wouldn't believe how much a caterpillar poops. I even had to cut another sprig off the fennel-dill plant for it. I really hadn't considered any long term plans for our new household pet. I just figured that we'd enjoy him for a few days and then release him back to nature. Imagine my horror when, on day three, I lifted Sawyer up to the window to say good morning to our caterpillar only to find him shriveled up at the bottom of the box - moldy, hard and brown. I've KILLED it, I thought.

Anybody who knows me knows I've harbored thing for butterflies since nearly dying on a mountaineering expedition in Patagonia. Of course, anybody who knows science knows that our little pet had likely metamorphosized into a pupa. But, I'd never actually seen this up close and was alarmed by the speed and, honestly, the severity of the change. He was half the size of his former self and not the same shape at all. And this was no Eric Carle cocoon either. (Apparently only moths actually make cocoons.) It more closely resembled a stumpy twig. I had already identified the caterpillar as a Black Swallowtail in my Peterson's First Guide to Caterpillars; but the book said that the species overwinters as a chrysalis and I hadn't signed on for six month roommate situation when I took the little guy in. We left twiggy in his box on the windowsill, primarily because I wasn't sure what to do with him. I still thought it was possible he had died. We added him to our nighttime prayers (Godbless mommy, daddy, justin, arden, duncan and the caterpillar) and hoped for the best.

So guess what I found this morning:

A beautiful butterfly!