TreasuresInTerraCotta

Today Andrew turned three!  We headed to the Zoo for some fun.  I sometimes wonder why I take my camera to the zoo.  The pictures are really always about the same.  The animal look about the same and perhaps even the same as the postcards you could find in the gift shop. But the zoo just seems like a photographic place to me.  And now that I have so many zoo pictures I could compare them if I wanted to.  "Look how tall Calvin has grown" or  "When that picture was taken we were at the zoo with Kaley" or "Andrew was the age the Truman is now!"  And then, there are times, when something magical happens and a snapshot turns out more stunning than I expected.  Like this...  And then there is the possibility that an older gentleman with three children and college-age grandchildren of his own, will offer to take your picture. I told him he was very kind. I told him that it was a true gift he had given me....

By the way...have you seen the new animal sculptures at the zoo? We took these pictures last month. The zebra is so life like, but I promise this zebra is metal! The jaguar looks a little more artsy in his armor-clad glory.

Papa Quail keeping guard for the Mama Quail.  We haven't seen any Baby Quail yet.

We are back to school this week.  We have two more weeks of curriculum and we will be finished with Kindergarten.  Wow!  It will probably take us four weeks to get through it, but I can still say Wow! Calvin keeps saying that he will be glad to start first grade "after a few weeks break for summer."  Here he is doing a little breakfast reading.  We have read this book many times, but he sat and read the whole thing to himself a few days ago.  Tyler was so amused that he took pictures and video...all while Calvin was totally engrossed in his book.  This week is "Qq for Quail" which also includes the study of birds in general.  So we headed to the zoo for a little adventure.  Andrew chasing a duck.   Calvin chasing the same poor duck.  The duck escaped for a few minutes of peace.  But the lure of sandwich crusts proved too enticing to the duck so she quickly ventured out of the bushes, only...

The second butterfly emerged on October 2nd. My sister came to rescue them from our empty house while we were camping. She captured a few great images. Here they are in the butterfly habitat. As you might expect the butterflies did not seem especially happy with this confinement. So after a couple days of observation they were set free! They know the good-stuff when they see it. This one immediately visited the Texas Ranger flowers. Look very closely at this picture. The butterfly is on the flowers on the right side of the picture. Entering on the left, near the green bush, is a hummingbird! Nature is amazing!

Later the same morning... Beautiful!

The first chrysalis that formed suddenly turned dark over night. That means it's getting close to emerging! But we're going camping, so I'm going to let my sister and her kids watch the butterflies. Maybe they will get some pictures!

We are now the proud care takers of two chrysalides. We found these two this morning. This afternoon we moved them to fancy new digs in a Butterfly Habitat. It should take 7-10 days for a butterfly or moth to emerge. I found pictures of our caterpillars on line, but I could not find a description of what they would turn into other than "Lepidoptera," which could be either a butterfly or a moth. I did some research on Wikipedia last night (in my defense, we are not to the "Bb for Butterfly" lessons yet...you will remember these were eating my father-in-law's parsley so we are doing our Butterfly unit prematurely.) -Butterflies and other creatures who go through complete metamorphosis go through 4 stages. Embryo - Larva - Pupa - Imago -Our caterpillars (larva) have changed to a chrysalis (pupa) -My primary question: How does the chrysalis form. I was under the impression that the caterpillar had to spin the chrysalis around itself (but that would be a coc...

My Father-in-Law found three of these beauties eating his parsley. Tuesday night this one decided to find a comfortable spot on the ceiling of his plastic tub. Wednesday morning Caterpillar #1 was already changing shape. Caterpillar #2 was very fat and lethargic. Caterpillar #3 went home to the great garden in the sky. Wednesday afternoon both caterpillars were hanging out on the lid. Caterpillar #1 was firmly attached by the hind end and had some silk near the head acting like a sling. And what kind of crazy miracle happened overnight! Caterpillar #1 had a chrysalis by Thursday morning. How in the world did that form? I guess I've forgotten (or maybe never learned) my butterfly life cycles. It seems rather magical to me. (Calvin is interested, but I'm the one checking those crazy caterpillars every couple hours and taking photos!) I can not figure out how the caterpillar made the chrysalis. Time for some research, I suppose. I'll keep you posted.