the sleppys

It’s on days like these that I just want to forget the home schooling and take the guitar out to the front yard and strum it while the children chase each other. It’s quiet today, with only the breeze making a sliding down through the trees. No big engines. No lawn crews. No loud music from neighbors’ homes. Just birds’ chirping, honking, mewing, cheetering, and all those wonderful noises that define the springing of the year. The skies are partly cloudy but mostly sunny. Under the shade of a strangler fig is the perfect spot to sit and practice the tin whistle.

Dad woke up extra early this morning to go with his friend to the Everglades. They planned to catch the sunrise.

After two weeks and a day, we thought that the chrysalis had died. I’ve read that it takes ten to fifteen days for a butterfly to emerge from the chrysalis, but by Friday, the 15th day, no change had become of the chrysalis.

It was Saturday evening when we saw its changing color. The chrysalis started turning darker, and the orange patterns on the wings were becoming apparent. Our hopes were up for our little Monarch friend.

Sunday morning, it was really black with a small amount of orange (and white, where the white dots on the wings are). Thirty minutes past noon, and I saw no change. It’s like waiting for a baby to be born. There’s waiting and waiting.

About an hour later, I stepped outside to see the chrysalis and was surprised to find a fully emerged butterfly holding onto a nearby twig. It didn’t flap its wings. It just clung to its twig, waiting for something to do, probably stunned as anything could be after having been asleep for a half life then waking up with wings!

The childrens maternal grandfather came to visit that afternoon, and we went outside to show him the Monarch. Dad started taking video if it. I suppose that it got excited by the ruckus that was going on around him because he opened and closed his wings a bit and began crawling. Dad stuck out a finger, and the butterfly climbed aboard. Dad tried to get him close to the milkweed so that the butterfly can get something to eat, but it took off, the butterfly did. It fluttered toward the middle of the front yard.

After a few hours, Dad and Taylor went back outside and caught the butterfly practicing to fly. It eventually found a safe place to spend the night on a leaf of the strangler fig in the front yard.

On Monday morning, we went outside and found it on the same leaf. We spend the morning indoors but popping our heads back out, looking for it, making sure that it’s safe. In the afternoon, it had wandered into the backyard, still flapping and fluttering as if practicing – but with more confidence.

A cardinal and blue jay were eyeing it but made no move to go after it.

It has been a little stressing, worrying about that darn butterfly that we’ve raised since hatching from its tiny egg under the milkweed leaf. I hope he comes back to eat sometime.