Butterflies

While we were in Dunedin, we went to the Otago Museum. Most of the museum is free, but we paid to go to the science center, which includes a Butterfly House. We got there in time to see the daily release of newly-hatched butterflies. There are three stories, and the temperature rises from comfortable at the bottom to hot and steamy at the top, to mimic a tropical rain forest. We enjoyed seeing so many unusual butterflies! Everyone enjoyed letting butterflies rest on their hand: Little Miss,

Mr. Diligence,

Gayle,

yours truly,

Miss Joy,

and Mr. Sweetie.

A red-eared slider lived in a small pond on the bottom level. This was special to us because my sister in America has a terrarium with eight of these turtles that they accidentally dug up.

Before we went in, we checked out these acoustic disks. They are about 50 feet apart. If you whisper into the center of one, from a few feet away, the whisper is easily heard at the other one, or anywhere in between.

I followed Miss Joy around while the other three children who were with us hung out with Gayle. She enjoyed playing with this exhibit, shaping a river bed and seeing the water flow through it.

Gayle grabbed these two pictures in the Animal Attic section of the museum.

As I mentioned in the post about going to Gales Pond while we were in Michigan, we took several Monarch butterfly chrysalises along with us to Ohio. I wondered if the butterflies would survive all the bumping and banging they endured en route, so when, a few days after we arrived in Ohio, we saw that several had turned black, we were thrilled. They were within a day or so of hatching, we knew.

We hung the twigs on which I had tied the chrysalises from a window between the kitchen and dining room in Gayle’s parent’s house, and we kept a very close eye on them. The first three hatched without our noticing; we saw each of them within a few minutes, but missed the actual emergence. The last two, though, we were privileged to see come out of their shell. That was quite the experience! The video we got of it is a bit blurry at times, because the camera had a hard time focusing that closeup, but it’ll give you an idea of what happens.