I’m Getting Butterflies!

We’re all a flutter over here since we found our first batch of morpho eggs on the plants in the flight house.  Jon had originally ordered them from Costa Rica so all we had were the pupae.  Apparently they’re having fun reproducing!  The little greenish eggs look like Miracle Gro fertilizer to me.  You pop them off the leaves and that reminds me of Dots candy on that long strip of paper.   So we’ll see how I do raising these little guys and gals to adulthood.  There are about 145 in that cup above and I gathered more today.  They take 9 days to hatch.  The little ‘pillars (sorry, larvae) have red on them with spiky hairs that can irritate skin, so I’m sure you’ll be hearing about those woes in the next couple of weeks.

I took the magnifying glass to it and you can see the tiny larvae inside of some.  It’s amazing how small these things are.  I’m glad one of my eyes is still pretty good!

These cute little tic tacs of Caligo eggs are laid on the tops of banana leaves.  Considering how many we see chasing after each other, we haven’t found that many eggs.  Speaking of Caligo’s, the one I’m taking care of did something weird the other morning.  It purred.  Like a fast clicking sound.  I think it was telling the morpho to buzz off.  More recently it vibrates its wing (I say that singularly because it’s now missing the entire right side of its other wing).  Usually seems to do it around food.  They definitely like to ‘talk’ in certain ways.  I’ve been noticing that the little larvae even fight with one another if they get too close.  Such personality!

Here are some other critters flying around in the house:

We found this thing the other day hanging under a leaf and figured it was some crazy looking chrysalis (getting used to that).  So we glued it to the cardboard with the rest, only to find the next day it had become unglued somehow and moved to the top of the box.  Very odd.  I think it could be a junk bug, which carries pieces of STUFF around with it for a disguise.  Super creepy.

Finally, a cool spray painting of Bob Marley we passed by the other day along the road: