Every Summer, my daughters will find 1 or 2 caterpillars, and care for them until they hatch into beautiful butterflies. This butterfly (in the picture above) was taken care of by my youngest daughter. It is a beautiful process to watch, to see them go from caterpillar, to cocoon, to a beautiful butterfly. Once the butterfly emerges from its cocoon, it takes about 6 to 7 hours or longer for its wings to fully dry. And then the butterfly will eventually try to fly until it is successful. It's a great experience to see the growth and then to be able to released it to the world. If you ever decide to give this a try, one of the plants they eat is fennel. If you look closely at a local fennel plant, you will probably see little caterpillars. When you pick up the caterpillar, grab lots of fennel. They love it and will eat a lot of it creating and entering their cocoon. To learn more, check out this butterfly cycle of life photo below, or go to this google search.
