I have a plan ....

After looking at the calendar and realizing that the last 3 weeks of summer vacation have actually been just barely one week - God help me!

Tonight, I came up with a plan.

Every day I plan to take my children outside to find something interesting in the neighborhood. Something that we are normally too busy to stop and notice.

We actually made a discovery that qualifies today, although the plan wasn't yet put into action. While playing outside we noticed that my passion vine had fallen down and needed to be helped along to re-climb the wood pillar. While manipulating the vines around and around the pillar, the 6 year old notice a bright orange caterpillar with black spikes all over his body.

My boys like bugs of all sorts, so this was a great thrill to the 6 year old and the 4 year old, as you can imagine.

We capture the caterpillar and put it in the bug box.

We are careful not to touch the little spiky fella just in case he is poisonous. (always a mom!)

I then sit down at the computer so I can answer the next inevitable questions ...

What kind of caterpillar is he? Will he turn into a butterfly? Can I keep him forever? *sigh*

Turns out, that my research produced a yes answer to at least one of these questions. He is a Gulf Fritallary Caterpillar and he will indeed turn into a beautiful butterfly! Apparently these particular caterpillars love to munch on the passion vines and have spread across Florida with the rabid planting of these flowers. After further investigation of the vine we found two more caterpillars and added them into the bug box along with a few twigs and some of the passion vine leaves they happily munching on.

Hopefully these little guys are happy in their new home and soon my children will be able to watch the wonder of nature as they grow, turn into cocoons and then into butterflies that we can release safely into the backyard again.

*disclaimer: at 11:30pm when I wrote this entry, the idea of a daily discovery outing sounds wonderful. I do not promise that tomorrow in the 90* heat that I will be as willing to go on a hunt for neighborhood mysteries.*