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.
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Today DD and DH are boating. So I have a day off of being wife and mom. YAY!
What are you doing this weekend?
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