Getting to Know the Fauna of Central Texas or The Caterpillar: Part I

Around the time of the 4^th of July, I discovered some caterpillars on my parsley plans in the front garden. My initial reaction to caterpillars is to dispatch them quickly and efficiently. However, Ian has expressed an interest in butterflies over the past year, wanting books, shows and even a butterfly habitat for Christmas. We raised some mail order butterflies that are native to all parts of the United States and let them go within a few short weeks. He had such a good time with that, I figured I should look into what kinds of caterpillars we had infiltrating the herb garden and possibly have the kids raise them.

They were unique looking caterpillars, and I remember they were on my parsley plants last year as well. They had an odd appendage called an osmetrium, a fleshy organ that looks like an antenna. A website I pulled up identified them as the larval stage of Swallowtail butterflies. (This was important because Lisa insisted that any type of caterpillar we raised should NOT metamorphose to some ugly brown moth.) The pictures we found online proved that the Swallowtail butterfly would be an attractive creature. Further investigation online showed that the destructive little creatures exclusively eat parsley, carrots, fennel and dill, so providing food for them would not be an issue. We grow more parsley than we can use.

Here is a closeup of one of the caterpillars. We only found two on the parsley; apparently the birds had gotten to most of them this year.

We had the boys get mason jars and line the bottom with rocks from the garden. They then placed clippings of parsley inside and misted them with water so the caterpillars had something to drink. We secured the top with a mason jar lid, but rather than using the metal cover, Lisa ingeniously used a napkin so that they could breathe. Ian was REALLY excited about "his" butterfly.

Liam wasn't all that interested in this project, but Miles definitely was. He kept wanting to hold his caterpillar jar up for the picture.

Here is a quick shot where I didn't tell Miles to say "cheese." He was busily looking at the caterpillar he didn't hold the jar to his face.

A couple weeks after placing the two caterpillars in their jars, I decided to have the boys make "field journals." Basically, I set up a table with chairs and a lamp and had them write a few sentences about observations they had about their caterpillars, (what they ate, did they hatch from an egg, etc.) and then had them draw a picture of their caterpillars matching the coloring with crayons as best they could.

It took a little discussion for them to really notice all the markings, and a study lamp set up so they could see it clearly. Liam showed more interest at this point, and Ian was ecstatic to work on his book. Miles just liked being able to color how he wanted.

The boys were enthusiastic to clean out the jars and replace the old dried parsley with fresh leaves. They very carefully used clamps we had to extract the old leaves without hurting the caterpillar.