Guest Author - Diane Claus

The Bugville Butterfly Treehouse is a collapsible mesh “tree house” that comes with a coupon that you mail in (along with more money for shipping) to receive five Painted Lady Butterfly caterpillars. After 6 weeks or so the caterpillars will arrive in a jar that has the food already in it. All you need to do is place the caterpillars out of direct sunlight and wait about a week until with crawl to the top and spin their chrysalises. After a week the butterflies will emerge. At this point you can release the butterflies or you can keep them and try to raise more.

My son saw this and was very eager to get the butterflies. Neither of us was aware that we had to send away for the caterpillars (the cost is around $6), and my son was very upset about it. I ended up having to put the tree house back in the box and putting it away until the caterpillars arrived.

After about 6 weeks the caterpillars arrived. My son was again disappointed because he could not hold them and they did not move very much. After a week they were in their chrysalises and my son started to lose interest. Once they emerged as butterflies he loved them. After a couple of days we released all but one.

Below are the notes we kept:

Week 1
Day 1	Day 2	Day 3	Day 4	Day 5	Day 6	Day 7
Caterpillar	Caterpillar	Caterpillar	Caterpillar	Caterpillar	Caterpillar	Caterpillar
Discussed how a caterpillar eats and grows and then spins a pupa called a chrysalis and emerge a butterfly	Noted that they looked bigger and that they do not move much.	Asked "Why is there a spider web?" Looking up answer	Noted that they look bigger. Still no answer on the secretion. It covers the caterpillars and looks like a cobweb.	Noted that they look bigger and that they never look like they are moving.	One is moving to the top! The secretion is called "silk".	Two have attached themselves to the top.
Week 2
Day 1	Day 2	Day 3	Day 4	Day 5	Day 6	Day 7
Caterpillar	Chrysalis	Chrysalis	Chrysalis	Chrysalis	Chrysalis	Chrysalis
Despite having attached themselves to the top they have not started to spin their pupa.	Woke up to the excitement that all but one caterpillar had metamorphosed into a chrysalis.	No change, still waiting on the last one to fully change. It is mostly there.	Still waiting on the last two to fully change.	Moved them into the Butterfly Tree House. One still is not fully changed and fell off. He is lying on the bottom on a paper towel.
Week 3
Day 1	Day	Day	Day 4	Day 5	Day 6	Day 7
Chrysalis	Chrysalis	Butterflies	Butterflies	Butterflies	Butterfly	Butterfly
		We have butterflies!!		We released all but one butterfly	Decided to see if the butterfly would like an orange.
Week 4
Day 1	Day 2	Day 3	Day 4	Day 5	Day 6	Day 7
Butterfly	Butterfly	Butterfly	Butterfly	Butterfly
	Gave the Butterfly another orange slice.			The butterfly died.

Over all this was a fun project. I was a bit disappointed by the lack of movement of the caterpillars and the added cost to receive the caterpillars, but my sons’ enthusiasm made it worthwhile.