Steinbox

Amelia found a huge caterpillar in the grass under our largest silver maple!  Ben thinks it fell out of the tree.  We had never seen one so big, not even one of those orange and brown fuzzy ones!

First she put it in her bug house (see first photo), but Ben went online and did some quick research on how to care for a caterpillar pet.  He said the bug house really wasn’t big enough, so I contributed my largest vase to the experiment.

We weren’t sure what it would like to eat, so we added a few varieties of leaves, assuming it would prefer the maple leaves.  It ignored those, ate part of a hosta leaf, and then curled the hosta leaf around itself (not pictured).

Within an hour or two of its capture, it starting forming its cocoon!  We are leaving for a week at Camp tomorrow and will take it with us…online sources say it can take up to two weeks for it to emerge, but we’re hoping the bunny campers (ages 5-10) will get to see it happen (actual campers are ages 11-16—-bunnies are staff kids who are not old enough to be campers–they have their own building and staff).  Ben’s research indicates it will be a moth, not a butterfly…but I’m thinking it will be a pretty big one!!

Grandma Sharon and Amelia at the Brockport Festival last weekend:

“Ivory Soap.  It Floats.   Lathers Freely, Rinses Readily.”

I gave Amelia a jump rope.  I guess I forgot to tell her what it’s for!  She also made a swing out of it, tied it to the bar above her playhouse, and it actually worked as a swing–held her weight and everything!

We also went to Seabreeze this week (our local water park), but the camera battery died before any decent pictures were taken!  The exciting part was that Amelia was over 48 inches tall and could go on any of the adult rides!  I hadn’t measured her since the doctor did at her 5-yr check-up…at that time she was 46 and 3/4 inches, but it has been almost 10 months since then.  She was thrilled to be able to go on a pretty scary roller coaster…until she went on it!

Check back after the 22nd for pictures from Camp!  Have a great week, everyone!