They're free! At least four of them are. We took them outside and released them this afternoon. They had to be coaxed out of the cage but as soon as the open air hit their wings, they were off. I videotaped it and got one of them flying silhouetted against the sky for about half a second. After trying to take still shots and now video of adult butterflies, I'm thinking I should not have complained about the difficulty of taking caterpillar photos.
I tried uploading the video and I don't know what went wrong. I'm pretty computer literate until I hit a glitch and then I'm helpless.
It was a relief to see them flying free. Sadly, our little 'special' guy with no antennae didn't fly away. I had sort of expected that he wouldn't, still it was pitiful to watch him. We got him out but he couldn't lift himself off the grass at all. We finally put him on a leaf and put it up high enough that he wouldn't be stepped on but I expect if I go back and check tomorrow, I will find a dead butterfly. It would have been more humane to just put him out of his misery but I just couldn't do it.
So...... a cute little animal faces inevitable death. I could make it swift and (maybe) painless for him, but instead I choose to let him face the elements and prolonged suffering, because I'm not comfortable with killing him. Yikes, what does that say about me?
We've really had a good time with this little project. The girls had dreaded the day we would release the butterflies, every day asking with rising panic voices ," Do we have to let them go today?!?" But today they were OK with it. They got a kick out of watching them take off.
I got our Butterfly Garden Kit at a local school supply store but there's a website http://www.insectlore.com/ that sells them and other cool stuff.
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This reminds me of the episode of Andy Griffith where Opie takes care of some baby birds and then one day has to let them go.
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