Butterflies Are Free

*To truly enjoy this post, you should listen to Elton John's "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" as you read.  Seriously.  It's been running through my head all day!  Although when I played it for Chloe, she got a little teary.

Today was a momentous day.  We let our butterflies go.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to get the girls a butterfly garden.  I was desperate for activities to keep us occupied during these long summer days and this seemed to fit the bill.  Educational, relatively cheap, enjoyable for kids of all ages.  I purchased one from Insect Lore off of Amazon.com (although, fair warning, they've jacked up the price by almost $10 since I ordered it last month).  The kit came with a butterfly garden and a coupon for 3-5 caterpillars (of the painted lady variety).  A few days after I entered that coupon code online (and paid $5 more), our little friends arrived in a hermetically sealed cup.

The girls were overjoyed and immediately named them:

Yes, this is Inchie, Lacie, Jenessa, Flutterby, and Sunny Kathleen in their larvae form.  Gross, huh?  These guys pigged out for about a week on the brown stuff at the bottom of the cup and then spun themselves into cocoons.  We then moved them into their garden/cage/what have you.  And about seven days after that, we were ready to welcome the butterflies!

Chloe kept an excellent journal of I, L, J, F, and SK's activities:

All of the little girls became highly attached to their little "pets."  On Sunday, the gorgeous butterflies began emerging from their cocoons.  We fed them oranges and watched them use their long, black, straw-like tongues to drink the juice.  We enjoyed listening to them flap their wings.  But I knew it was only a matter of time before we had to make a choice.  We could a) release them into nature or b) wake up to a butterfly garden full of butterfly carcasses.  I decided option b would be far more traumatic, but I put off the release date for as long as I possibly could because everyone would burst into tears if I mentioned letting them go.  Thankfully Grandma decided to help soften the blow.  She invited us over to her house this morning to release the butterflies onto her butterfly bush and then have rootbeer floats to celebrate their new found freedom.  And we did just that.

First the girls said their goodbyes:

Then we released them.  A few tears were shed, but not many.  Because, hello, living at Grandma's house is an enviable fate to have.

Try to spot Sunny Kathleen on this bush!

Then we colored butterfly pictures and drank the floats.

A lovely farewell indeed!