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May 14, 2006
Butterflies are free...
Some days in the garden are good, others not so much...we've had a few near misses and one fatality in the garden this morning...Abby was beating on a newly hatched Black Swallowtail but thankfully I caught her early enough to save the butterfly- which is now high in the Red Bud tree and out of kitty view....and then we found Clementine beating a newly-hatched gulf fritilary , but again, it was averted early enough and now its in the crossvine sunning itself, drying its wings, getting ready to make its voyage...But unfortunately the greatest loss was one of our two Giant Swallowtails (the caterpillars that look like poop!)...Abby managed to find the one that had hatched and when I found it, she had done a pretty good number on it...its wings are ravaged, and one of the body segments is oozing...so Brian put it in the freezer where it will slowly fall asleep and not know what happened...
sounds harsh, I know, but we didn't want to see it flounder and suffer in the real world, although I suppose perhaps a bird might find it a tasty treat...we have one more Giant that we are keeping our eye on, and hope it hatches and flies away with no problems...
I wish I had my camera yesterday - we visited Our Fave Nursery and on their pipevine plant were gazillions of the caterpillars crawling all over it...it was crazy..black with caterpillars...awesome...everywhere you looked they were squirreling around...they had stripped the plant (although I hear it'll come back in about a week), and we didn't bring any home for our little vine, cause we don't want to strip it before it gets established...I don't wanna be playing Catepillar Survivor with these guys just yet...
The demo yesterday was a blast...the new BlueMoon store is fantastic, and the lampwork area is amazing...loved it...lots of folks stopped by, (why do people come by who are grumpy? bah), and I made some crazy beads...it was loads of fun...and Jim asked me to bring some strands of beads in for sale- everything right now are organic focals, so they want some strands...looks like I need to get back to work...!
The frozen caveman butterfly just emerged...I'm curious to see if he comes back to life once he warms up...I saw a goldfish do that at a science fair in middle school once...i'll keep ya posted...
Posted by Donner at May 14, 2006 10:28 AM