What can butterfly-crazy kids do in mid-winter in Wisconsin? Why, go to an indoor butterfly exhibit, of course! The Monarch Girls, along with their younger brother, visited the Milwaukee Public Museum recently, spending over an hour in the butterfly wing.
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| A butterfly with cabin fever? |
We were given a free one day family pass to the museum about a year ago, when we delivered two recently emerged swallowtail butterflies along with several swallowtail chrysalides, and we finally took the time to use it! Yes, you read that correctly! Last winter we had two swallowtail butterflies in our house! They pupated in a plastic aquarium, which was supposed to sit in the unheated garage all winter. However, when one of the girls took the aquarium to school for show and tell, it never got returned to the garage. Instead, it sat in the house, where it was warm enough to throw the little guys into thinking spring had arrived! The museum staff was gracious enough to take charge of the butterflies and chrysalides after we managed to keep them alive about a week in the house, feeding them homemade nectar from plastic kitchen sponges.
Do we have any pupae in the house this winter? No! We have one moth cocoon safely residing in the garage. No more swallowtails flying around this house in January!
Back to that museum excursion, we hope you'll enjoy this gallery of selected photos from our visit.
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| Up close and personal! |
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| Lending a hand. The Monarch Girls were very helpful to other children that wanted a chance to hold a butterfly, including their little brother. |
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| The Monarch Girls' little brother was so happy to have coaxed a butterfly onto his finger! Then he saw the camera and plastered on a fake smile worthy of the dinosaur section of the museum! |
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| What a beauty! |
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| Enjoying time with butterflies. |
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| A hands-on activity to help children understand butterfly scales. |
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| "I want to be a butterfly!" |
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| That's a pretty funny looking monarch emerging from that chrysalis! |
