Butterfly!

When we got up this morning our chrysalis looked like this:



After lunch, we found this:

Well not exactly this, I saw what you can see on the right - the top of the chrysalis. But the butterfly had fallen to the bottom of the cage and was unable to get out of the chrysalis completely. Eventually it managed to wiggle it's way over to the side to climb up and stretch out it's wings. But it still has not managed to get all of the chrysalis off and one of the wings is folded over at the bottom. For the record, it is female.

And in the backyard:

A lone cat has somehow managed to get to 3rd instar without any leaves on the milkweed and with daily heavy tropical downpours. I thought this picture was nice - you can see s/he is getting ready to molt and is covered in beads of water.

Snips and Snails...

From kind of cute....


To downright scary! This spider I found on bugguide.net listed as an "unusual spider", well maybe we have an unusual backyard because we have spiders like this all the time! It said it is a Spinybacked Orbweaver. One of my neighbors called it a crab spider, but evidently there really are such things as crab spiders and this is not what they look like. She also said their bites hurt a lot, but according to the entomology department at the University of Florida, they are not dangerous. Whew!

These babies are on my milkweed sprouts in the front yard. I did not expect to find caterpillars on them just yet - they have not bloomed, but I guess momma Monarchs know what to look for!


I do have some Pentas planted in front that attract butterflies. The milkweed in pots are all about 4-8 inches tall. I may plant some in front to attract more butterflies there too.

And finally, I have some bad news about our little chrysalis. In an earlier picture, you may have noticed that it has a strange lumpy spot on the back. I don't know what it is or if it is a big deal, but in checking in on it, I started noticing tiny black dots popping up all over the chrysalis. This is not a great picture, but you can see the spots.
The spots are an indication that our butterfly has a parasite called Ophryocystis elektroscirrha, which is so hard to say that almost every butterfly website abbreviates it as O.E. without bothering to say what that stands for. The only hosts for O.E. are monarch and queen butterflies. And I guess this may explain both the first dead chrysalis and the partially molted caterpillar I found. Males usually are really deformed and don't reproduce, but females may be almost normal, except that everywhere they go, they leave O.E. spores behind. Which means an O.E. female visited our milkweed and probably all those 17 caterpillars contracted O.E. This means that even if our butterfly encloses (which means emerges) we cannot let it go.

I don't know if there is anything that can be done about this problem. It said online to use native milkweeds because tropical varieties are more likely to harbor the parasite, but our native variety IS the tropical variety! So I guess we will just continue to enjoy the fat grubby cats as they munch the milkweed and the butterflies that visit our yard. I do not intend to put another monarch in the cage at this time.

Paper Helicopter

We discovered a craft project so easy and so fun that I had to post it here! It's a paper helicopter - here's the pattern:

Follow the cutting and folding instructions, then fold up the bottom part by 1/2 inch twice and clip it with a large paper clip. Then you can throw it up high in the air and watch it spin back down.

We have a book called Quick and Easy Paper Airplanes that Really Fly! by Paul Jackson, and it is a very nice paper airplane book. The planes in it really fly! And some of them can really go really far. But it does not include a paper helicopter. We found this in an activity book my mom gave me (365 TV Free Activites You Can Do With Your Child by Steve and Ruth Bennett).

I was really suprised at how it spins around when you drop it. Caleb demonstrates:


It spins so fast this is the best picture I could get mid-air.


I was also surprised at how much it occupied Caleb - our house has a balcony that looks over the living room and he ran up and down the stairs for about half an hour. He didn't even realize he was completely wearing himself out! Bedtime was a breeze!

P.S. I made an error on the pattern, it should be 8 1/2 inches.

It's the best toy EVER!

(The title to today's post is an allusion to Too Many Toys, by David Shannon)


It is pretty insane how much of the time my kids play with things rather than toys! Caleb really likes to make crafts, so we are always cutting up boxes and taping things together.

Wordless Wednesday

It's a Boy!

And a girl...and a boy...and a girl...and a boy...and a girl...and another girl....

One of our gambusias had babies! We counted 2 different pictures and the final count is between 25 and 30. Now that's what fecundity is all about!

We are certain there were more though because Rob noticed the other fish swarming this female and they were eating the babies as they were being born!

Just for the fun of watching them grow, we are going to put them in a larger container and feed them for a little while and them let them go in a canal. Don't tell Caleb, but they will probably be eaten early on there too...he has already named one of them DeGlossius. I guess DeGlossius is just a fish name, like Fido is a dog name.

Some Gambusia trivia:

Gambusia babies are born live.
Gambusia mommies can be pregnant with babies at different stages of development, so although our fish had several babies today, she is probably still pregnant.
Gambusia's common name is mosquito fish and they were placed in pools in abandoned homes in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to help with the mosquito population - they eat mosquito larve, which are start their life in water.

And look who else is visiting our home...
Of the 17 caterpillars fighting over the last leaf of our butterfly garden, we picked this one to bring in to the butterfly cage. This has been suggested to us by several people, but it is not as easy as it sounds. Milkweed leaves don't stay appetizing once you've picked them, and it's not that easy to tell when the caterpillar is about to molt the last time anyway.
But this time, I had planted 12 milkweed seeds from the seed pod that split a while back. I've had 10 sprout, maybe 11, there is one that I'm not sure about. So I put one of the the pots in the butterfly cage with the caterpillar. The pot had 2 plants and one was enough to satisfy the caterpillar.

She climbed up on the edge of the pot and made her chrysalis. I did not want to leave the pot in the cage, so I read up on how to move the chrysalis.
It was VERY easy. I used a straight pin to sort of pull the white silk button away from the pot. The pin went through easily and I mounted the chrysalis on a piece of cardboard, which I stuck in the butterfly cage. I may move it to another part of the cage, but during the move, the chryslis was mostly undisturbed and I think that if you found a chrysalis outside, it would be just as easy to move inside.

Happy Memorial Day 2009!

We would've used 13 popsicle sticks, but it would have been disproportionate.

Our Backyard Zoo

I was outside looking at my milkweed "sticks" this morning and I turned around and saw a bright flash of green in the jackfruit tree. The green was very near the same color as the leaves and I almost missed this guy:


It's an anole or a green Cuban lizard.

Ok, so this thing was easily over a foot long. There are plenty of large reptiles down here, but this is the first time I've seen something this big (other than an opposum) in our backyard. I hope we don't find an alligator next!

A few branches above the anole was this large fly. I thought he looked pretty creepy - and it should be telling as to how big it was that I was able to get such a clear picture.

Mega-Cats

I had not checked on the milkweed in a few days until last week I went out and started peeking under leaves. The "sticks" had sprouted back a few bunches of leaves. I found 18 butterfly eggs - almost twice as many as had devoured the fully grown plants before.

Once they hatched, it seemed ridiculous how many caterpillars were on the plants! I only counted 17 at any one time.

Unfortunately, there is not enough food for these guys and they have all left our plants - I assume to find more milkweed, but unless another neighbor has some planted, I guess they will starve - I found a few already dead in the dirt...and I accidentally squished one that was crawling in the grass.

This girl likes bugs!

"How do you do?"

Feeding frenzy!!!
I like this picture - it's like a Highlights page - How many caterpillars can you find? (just a hint, if you click on this picture to see what I named it, I miscounted when I named this picture)

Another Cake Wreck

A friend of mine, who knows I like to make cakes, asked me to make a Bob the Builder cake for her son's 3rd birthday. I didn't want to use fondant, because usually people don't like the way it tastes, so I considered other options for making Bob as Bob-like as I could. I worked on him for about 2 hours (that is, she baked the cakes and I made the shirt, hat brim, belt, and shoes ahead of time) and after 2 hours I stepped back, pretty pleased with my work.

Unfortunately I didn't have a precocious 8 year old to critique my work! After the party, I showed my picture to another friend's son and he declared "That doesn't look like Bob the Builder!" and he was mostly right because the worst part of making a cake to look like a popular cartoon character is that unless they look EXACTLY like the character, they really don't look like the character! But also, the main things that kept him from looking just right were his eyes and ears, which I think in hindsight I could have (and would have) fixed, if I had not been blinded by 2 hours of mixing frosting colors and bending over smoothing out bumps. I am, however, VERY pleased with how everthing from the neck down turned out.

So here he is!



My friend was torn between wanting a dirt cake and a Bob cake, so I told her I would do Bob standing in mud. I think that turned out very nicely.

His shirt is made out of orange and cherry Starburst candies and his hat brim is made of lemon Starbursts. I microwaved them (full power) for 7 seconds. The belt and shoes are made of caramels, which I also microwaved 7 seconds, but really they are pretty malleable straight from the wrapper. His ears are also made from caramels (with icing on top). The eyes are peanut M&Ms - in hindsight I think I would have just piped the eyes so they would have been thinner. Here's the picture I used as a guide:

Also when I was 98% finished, I caught their cocker spaniel taste-testing the hat! Out of instinct, I screamed "NO MAKO!" ha! I was able to cut away the bitten spot and re-ice it. I think you cannot really tell where it happened:


Happily the birthday boy was EXTREMELY pleased with the cake, especially with the toy tools that were on the belt :)

Just Like Bogey and Bacall...

Well we've been back from our weekend trip to Key Largo for a few days, but life has been a whirlwind since then! Our family friends - the ones I used to babysit for - needed me to babysit for them because the dad is helping Rob with fund drive and the mom (a NICU nurse) was on call for 24 hours. They said sometimes when she is on call, they sit by the pool eating sushi (i.e. she doesn't get called), but this was not the case this time around! She worked a 13 hour day and needed the kids and me to spend the night in case she was paged in the night (she was). Anyway, my kids are thoroughly worn out, I am thoroughly worn out, and our house is thoroughly filthy!

We did have a nice weekend in the Keys. I took this picture of the 18 mile stretch so you can see the barrier they've installed between the lanes. I like how it's painted blue. It's interesting because they've widened the road to include it, but it's still only one lane each way, kind of like saying, "We like tourists...but not that much".

A station supporter offered to let us stay in her house and she and her pastor took us out on their boats to Nest Key, which is an undeveloped key covered in mangrove.

Caleb and Annalise riding the boat - most of the ride I couldn't have taken a picture because the water was so choppy, but in this picture we were in a no-wake zone, so we were going very slowly.

"Get this off of me!!!" Not a chance kid!

The bay was very shallow. They said average depth is 5 feet. The area where we put in anchor was 1-3 feet deep, so it was a nice place to swim with kids. EXCEPT...some of the people in our party got stung by sea lice (i.e. itty bitty jelly fish). I was fortunate enough to miss out on that fun!

"Can we get one?"

The gal who let us stay in her house had 3 dogs already, so she warmly welcomed Mako - who has never really been around other dogs. This is him with Willy, the pack leader and the smallest of her dogs. The other two were very docile, but Mako and Willy had to have a "talk" before Mako conceeded that he was indeed on Willy's turf.

Wordless Wednesday

Just Off The Nightstand: The Swiss Family Robinson

Ever wonder what book you'd want to have with you if you were ever stranded on a deserted island? Well this is it! The Swiss Family Robinson! (by Johann David Wyss)

I cannot say it is the best book I've ever read, because it's not. It's even kind of boring, but it's also pretty interesting because the family, who is stranded on a deserted island, has so many amazing discoveries and because of their generally innovative lifestyle.

I don't think I've ever seen the Disney movie version, but I'm pretty sure it's different from the book. While we were at Disney World, we toured the "Treehouse" and it is completely unlike the treehouse in the book. And for good reason - they were in a tropical location and it was unreasonable to live in a tree during the wet season. In the book they actually lived in several different locations, but mostly in a hollowed out salt mine.

One thing I found curious was how detailed the descriptions were of how they cured meat and dismembered the whale and generally made everything useful. As a child of the 20th century, it's all news to me, but would an early 19th century reader have been so naive? I guess I don't know.

Most of the book details their day to day activities of planting crops and making things out of what they have available. That is probably what I found most unrealistic about it. By the end of the book, they have created a life for themselves that is very comfortable, even luxurious. Plus they discover things like truffles, cacao beans, and vanilla beans on the island, so they really eat gourmet...well some of the time! The variety of animals really seems unrealistic to me too - lions and elephants and buffalo, ostriches, kangaroos, crocodiles, and a whole number of animals I'd never heard of...including the seadog, which I couldn't even find a description of online because everything that turned up was baseball or pirates!

So in short, there is not a real defined story line - because basically they are just starting life from scratch and the culmination is that they stay there for a decade without anyone coming by and then in the end, half of the family decides to stay on the island.

Two quotes I really liked were:

The environs of our habitation were rich and agreeable; our plantations had perfectly succeeded; and between the grotto and the bay was a grove of trees and shrubs, planted in tasteful confusion, which gave the spot the aspect of an English garden.

I liked that the description "tasteful confusion" because it perfectly describes what I'd like to achieve in my yard - I don't want it to look like there's a real pattern, but I don't want it totally wild either.

and

...perhaps some young person will see, in the course of this narrative, the value of a varied education and the importance of becoming acquainted with the first principles.

The "value of a varied education" caught my eye because (according to a professor I had) there is a Russian idea of 'foxes' and 'hedgehogs' and learners tend to be one of the two. Foxes dart from here to there learn a little about a whole lot of things; hedgehogs have one pet subject and really dig into that. I guess I have always felt like a fox sort of learner and know that that means I really don't know all that much about any one thing, but it is varied and it does have value - or at least it would if I were stranded on a deserted island!

A Few Pretty Much Unrelated Pictures

Annual rite of summer - watermelon, yes it is summer here, think mid summer hot, and really as hot as we get, because calendar summer is not as sweltering as the very end of the dry season.

But the rainy season is upon us. The last couple of days we've observed thick dark clouds in the western sky.

Caleb's feet grew while he was sleeping Saturday night. We squeezed his feet into his shoes on Sunday, but Monday decided we needed to go shopping. Annalise LOVES his new shoes and wears them whenever he has them off!

My poster child for healthy snacking...please disregard this week's Wordless Wednesday.

Annalise suddenly is very affectionate. She is very Miami and likes to kiss both cheeks :)

Yea mud!

I was doing some yardwork in the backyard this morning, when Caleb started shouting, "A MOTH! Momma! Come and see this MOTH!!!" I know they are not as pretty as butterflies, but I think they are pretty interesting. This one was about 1cm long, so it was pretty tiny.

I could not find this one, but I highly recommend bugguide.net if you want to identify an insect.

...aaaaand we found this monarch butterfly visiting our starfruit tree. It seemed very sluggish and I thought perhaps it had just emerged from a chrysalis on the starfruit tree, but I couldn't find one. It didn't move until Annalise touched it!

I thought it was strange it only had 4 legs, but I read online that monarchs curl up their front two legs, and they are very hard to see. I was relieved because after having the one die in chrysalis and the 2nd one die making it's chrysalis, I was starting to think we had some backyard problem that was causing our butterflies to be deformed!

And I found this little guy on our grill last night - it is buffo season, but this one was not too huge. I think he looks like Kermit the Frog. Isn't it cute how his front feet are crossed like arms!

Wordless Wednesday