Our third of six cocoons hatched this week and butterfly number three came out rearing to make the most of his 7 days on this earth! We were having dinner and Abby stops mid-sentence and squeals, “A butterfly just hatched!” Jacob and I thought she was going crazy for a second but when we peeked around the corner of the hutch in the dining room, sure enough there was Patches #3! He wasn’t as slow and friendly as the other two though. This guy was flapping his wings frantically and made it very difficult for Jacob to catch him, even with the butterfly net! We finally coaxed him into the net and Abby released him on to our now very large fennel bush out back, but he/she wasn’t too excited about being confined to our little backyard (no matter how butterfly paradise-like we’ve tried to make it) and he immediately flew 40 feet into the air and took off towards the woods. We waved goodbye and wished him luck finding a mate to bring back and have baby caterpillars on our fennel with. 🙂
P.S. This isn’t one of Jacob’s pictures…we didn’t take one of this guy (he was too excited to get outside). I got this one off the internet.
