Saturday, August 01, 2009

The Wonders of Superglue

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all. - Cecil Frances Alexander

'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' - Matthew 25:40


Yesterday, I checked our "J" pillars, and discovered that Maria had fallen from the roof and lay, curled in a ball, on the leaf below. I poked her once, but she didn't move and I was sure she was a goner. Still, ever hopeful, I left her where she was.

Later, I checked her and this is what I found:



In fact, she was still wiggling to get the skin off (if you look closely at the picture, you'll see the little ball of black skin beside her). At this point, I'm not certain whether I'm happy or sad -- the last time we had a pupa fall (it was a swallowtail) the butterfly emerged missing its back wings. Still, Maria clearly has a lot of will, so I had to figure out what to do.

Enter superglue gel. Again. This has been my butterfly savior this year. I globbed a ball on the roof of her "house":


Tried to pick her up using tweezers on the little black "stem":



Realized that I couldn't do that AND poke the stem into the glue so I carefully (because the pupa is squishy) lifted her into my palm:



And the scooted her to the edge and poked the stem into the partially dried glue blob:



And then it occurs to me that it will be hours before the glue is dried enough to hang her, so I find an alternate holder:



Let her dry for a couple hours and VOILA!:



Now we let her cook and hope she emerges with all her wings and other various body parts.

=====================

Today DD and DH are boating. So I have a day off of being wife and mom. YAY!

What are you doing this weekend?

======================

5 comments:

Maria Zannini said...

Ref: ...Maria had fallen from the roof and lay, curled in a ball, on the leaf below. I poked her once, but she didn't move and I was sure she was a goner.

LOL! You know, my husband said the exact same thing about me to his buddies at work. --only I fell in the shower, on my bad knee no less. Fortunately, no superglue was needed--just mega doses of aspirin. Oy!

Today, if I can get my slug hubby out of bed, we'll be hitting garage sales this morning. We are planning on a NO-WORK weekend. Finally!

Have a good day, Marianne.

Brandy said...

I hope your superglue works it's magic again! I'll keep my fingers crossed! Have a fantastic day!

Ceri Hebert said...

You are a butterfly hero!

Hope you enjoyed your day off. I spent mine working in the 4-H kitchen and wandering around the county fair. And drooling over horses.

Dru said...

Way to go super butterfly saver.

Anonymous said...

Wow great job!