Science at its BEST!

We just witnessed the COOLEST thing over here! Kaden caught seven army worms awhile back, and we've just had them hanging out in a tupperware container for about a week. Within a couple of days of catching them, four promptly cocooned themselves away while the other two just sort of shriveled up and died. I had never known that army worms did this, so we've just sort of had them hanging out on top of our fridge waiting to see what would happen.

Well, yesterday I looked in the container and saw a little moth in there. I didn't really put two and two together because Kaden had also caught a moth just yesterday and I just thought it had gotten loose and that I had stumbled upon it. This evening at supper time, I looked in again and there was a second little moth hanging out. And then it clicked! These babies were hatching - or whatever you call what they do when they come out of their cocoon!

And then - just as we were watching these little guys hopping and floundering around inside the container, one moth starting coming out of its cocoon and WE GOT TO WATCH THE WHOLE THING! It was SO cool! Seriously! I have never seen anything like this before, and I was amazed! The boys thought it was cool and then they ALL promptly went back to their wrestling and roughhousing, but - oh my word - I just watched this little guy all evening as he crawled around and dried his wings out and then practiced flapping them. It was amazing. We released the other two babies into the wild, but I'm going to give this little guy a few more minutes to get a good head start on life before I release him to the birds. Two more babies to go!

Come on now - do you not think that this is a pretty cool thing to witness?!! Kevin mocks my enthusiasm......:0)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Totally cool. :)
~Shannon (from Watchthesky)

Shay said...

Only mothers of boys can understand this little world! :)