Not-So-Hungry Caterpillars

About three weeks ago while playing in the backyard we found a pair of caterpillars crawling around. We showed them to Gracie and she was so entranced that we decided to try keeping them in a jar to see if they would cocoon and turn into butterflies. We put them in a clean peanut butter jar in Gracie's room and then spent a couple of days freaking out because they wouldn't eat any of the leaves we put in with them (and we gave them several different varieties, people--I'm all about options).

Then one day I looked in their jar and they were gone. I had a moment of panic--how to explain this to Gracie?--and then I realized they had made cocoons! Both of them! At the same time! So we had two side by side cocoons just sitting there in their jar on top of Gracie's dresser. After a while I started to wonder if they were okay in there, but then a couple of days ago I discovered that they had both emerged from their cocoons! We were so stoked that this experiment worked out and we had amazingly kept them alive (through no magic of our own, we realize).

Anyway they weren't butterflies, they were moths, but Gracie was pretty excited anyway.

Moths. Kind of icky, but cool that they started as caterpillars. Those silver-gray things are their cocoons.

Grace inspecting her moths. 

We put them outside to let their wings dry so they could fly away, and Gracie took the lid off herself and told them goodnight. By morning they had fluttered off. And thus ended our happy butterfly (well, moth) experiment.