organic food is out biggest luxory these days, well that and smellies without evil chemicals in eg parabens, etc...
but twice this week i encountered criters free with the greens, and i wondered if they might soon pupate and become pets/an educational interest? i set about keeping these 2 wrigglers alive, currently on something spinach-like i found in the garden. the tiny caterpillar came with some chard from a friends allotment last thursday, and the big fat gorgeous one on some cabbage in our veg box on tuesday. so far so good, with both having eat and rest times and getting new leaves everyday.
sorry about the pics, both toddlers and catterpillars dont keep still, i had to hold matty's hand to get the blurry pic i did get!
daisy and matty like to be catterpillas, which involves eating green leaves and doing green poohs. it also involves crawling instead of walking which can make getting ready for lunch, bed etc take more time! they also like to carry imaginary ones around with them, this can make it difficult as one of their hands is always occupied!
now i just need to find out what to do next, when or if they pupate .... looks like we have some pets again !
2 comments:
It's Clara Caterpillar!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Clara-Caterpillar-Pamela-Duncan-Edwards/dp/0064436918
The kiddo loved that book, but fortunately had forgotten it by this summer, when the cabbage whites (which have been accidentally imported to the US) started laying eggs on my cabbages and Clara and her siblings turned them into lace. Because unlike in the book, they got fed to ducks before they turned into anything, and any future hatchlings taken care of with (supposedly organic) Bt powder.
There's a whole set of little green caterpillar types, (on both sides of the Atlantic), and some turn into kind of boring brown moths while others turn into (usually white or yellow) butterflies. Feed them up on cole crops and greens and see what you end up with. In some cases, the later stages want to burrow into say a cabbage head, so it may or may not work out depending on the exact species you've got.
And the further problem is you might not want to release the adults, knowing they're major pests for cole crops and greens.
How absolutely brilliant for the children to learn and be interested.
They are having such an experience that they will remember this their entire lives.
I think you are WONDERFUL!!!!!
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