Mentionable Critters

We here at the Cutlip household have a love for bugs.  Well love might not be the best term to describe how I feel or have felt about all of them, but definitely an interest on my part...love from those around me, namely one way handsome hubby who has passed on his feelings to three small people.

In the past I've posted about our pet wolf spider, Wolfy and our frogs, Giant and Sammy (who, by the way, I'm sorry to inform you, did not make it through the attempt to hibernate them over the winter....it wasn't pretty).

Here are some others that we've had over the past year or so:

Butterflies
Sometime shortly before Noah was born, our butterflies from Insect Lore school project hatched from their chrysalises and emerged beautiful Painted Lady butterflies.  There were four of them.  One had a deformed wing and couldn't fly.  It had not stayed attached to the paper disk as we transferred them from their plastic container to the butterfly habitat.  As per the instructions, we layed it on the floor of the habitat and hoped for the best. 

The Saturday after Noah was born we took all four butterflies down to Sedona where it was warmer to release them.  It  occurred to me as we were driving that, like butterflies, we had four children.  And, like our butterflies, one wasn't formed right.

Once we got to our favorite spot by the creek behind Tlaquepaque, we opened up the top of the habitat and one by one, the kids helped the butterflies out of the habitat.  We watched as three of them flew out over the creek and out of sight.  The fourth butterfly with the deformed wing, our Noah butterfly, held tightly to some leaves.

As the kids and Tom practiced skipping rocks across the creek, I stayed and watched the last little butterfly.  Knowing that it's chances of survival weren't good I had thoughts of keeping him and bringing him home with us.  But, I didn't think I could bare to watch him die in our home so I gently moved him to a different plant that had blooms and walked away.



Rabbit
Here's a random rabbit that Phoebe caught and brought to us.  The kids took turns holding it and then, with Phoebe safely locked inside, we released it near the back of our property.


Goats
The kids, my mother-in-law, and I took a day trip down to Strawberry to feed some goats with my friend, Bree.  We had a blast holding huge bottles of milk while baby goats pushed and shoved each other to get their fare share.



Praying Mantis
For Christmas this year we asked for and received a habitat with coupon for Praying Mantis.  We all thought it would be way cool to have one of those as a pet.

In February we sent in our coupon and a couple weeks later received our ball of mantis eggs.  After four weeks of waiting, out popped at least a hundred tiny praying mantis.  We put five of them in their habitat and took the rest down to Sedona (same place where we released the butterflies) to release.

Unfortunately, even though we bought the mantis fruit flies to eat (we couldn't find any aphids to give them), all five of them died.  Hopefully we'll have better luck next year.


Mice
Last but not least, this past week Phoebe caught four baby mice in our house.  We thought that they were oh so cute and put them in the aquarium to watch.  Sadly we thought it best to let them go.  After naps on Sunday we took them out into the woods.  Tom built them a nice little house and we said good-bye.  Livvy cried.

Comments

Coby said…
You are a better woman than I! I don't do bugs! ;-) Maybe when we get to bugs in our homeschooling adventures I'll send my kids over to your house! ;-)
Monika said…
Hi Jenn, did you get my message about the anencephaly network? Please contact me again by mail.

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