Twinkie

This is Twinkie on a milk weed leaf.  We have four pets currently: Twinkie, Flower, Bob and George II.  George I met an untimely death on the way into the house.
Twinkie was this small, Bob was even smaller.  They need new leaves every morning.  At least one day, they eat a whole leaf - like corn on the cob.  You can literally watch them grow.  Its so amazing.  They get to be about 2 inches long  and they start out so itty bitty.

Then they make this cool green chrysallis.

And then you get to set a beautiful monarch free.  

We still have 3 green chrysalli hanging out on our counter.  One isn't looking so good, but we'll hang on to it for awhile before we give up!

Its brought back lots of memories of where we were at and what we were doing last year at this time.  Our belongings were all packed into the garage. We had plastic containers on our immaculately clean counters holding small caterpillars and every time there was a showing Stripey and Stryper (our caterpillars last year) either got stuffed into a cupboard, set in the garage with all the stuff, or brought with us to church, a friends house, or wherever we ended up that night.  It was crazy, and seems oh so long ago.

Brandon still calls them callerpittars.  Love that.