If You Love Them, Don’t Kill Them
That’s always been a motto I’ve lived by and one I think everyone can learn from. But wait? What does that have to do with anything, you ask?
This post, that’s what. It’s a sweet life lesson learned by Joshua as he and MC ripped caught three Monarch caterpillars from their families and natural habitat, sealed them in a jar and watched the miracle of life and death unfold on our kitchen counter. The Death part came when one started to hang itself upside down and blew a gasket, oozing a long trail of suspended goo from the top of the jar. Not sure what that was all about, but it’s the stuff of my nightmares now.
The other two, however, taught Life’s lessons as they cocooned, metamorphasized and hatched into the stately flying insects they were born to be. To watch the whole thing brought back the milkweed scouring/Adams peanut butter jar memories of childhood as we had fun with seeing Joshua extra excited to as they hatched. After a day or two under incarceration our watchful eye, Mama and Joshua decided to let them go before they decided to go belly up and volunteer for an entemology collection.
Joshua and MC took them out onto the deck and let them go. The two Monarchs wasted no time in getting the he-double-hockey-sticks out of their “Butterfly Bungalow” and away from us. So fast, in fact, there was no time to get pics as we showed the Monarchs how much we loved them (by setting them free, see?). Apparently, they weren’t all that attached. Ingrates.
Like I said: Life lessons learned.
