Caterpillars

Thanks to a good friend with a good garden, my girls have two new pets.  It’s partially my fault.  I’d never seen Broccoli growing, and when my friend offered anything in her garden to me, I was excited to take some fresh broccoli. 

Well, as I was getting dinner ready that night, pulling the leaves off the broccoli, I grabbed a leaf and was surprised to find it curling around my finger.  I shrieked.  C came running.  The fat, green, squirming thing dropped to the counter.

After I’d explained myself to C and pointed out the small creature, I was surprised when his next question was, “Do we have anything to keep it in?” 

Well, everyone has a spare mason jar, right?  And I’m sure I can poke holes in the top of it with something … and so we ended up with our two largest caterpillars staying on in the house.  I even got sent back to pick some leaves to feed them, at C’s insistence that caterpillars are very picky, and we need to have the same food they were feeding on where I found them.

I would have posted pics of the caterpillars, but I didn’t expect them to make their cocoons within 24 hrs of putting them in the jars.  Now we’re waiting to see what comes out.   From what I could tell, they’re cabbage loopers, who will be nocturnal brown moths when they come out.  We shall see …