Creatures

We have quite a few creatures at our house right now.

These silkworms came from one of Ava's preschool friends. They heard about her interest in bugs and all things creepy-crawly and offered to share some of their silkworms with us. I believe you can see 5 of them in this picture. They eat mulberry leaves and we have a tree in our side yard. Ava and her daddy go outside every other day and get new leaves for them to eat. They will eventually spin cocoons and turn into moths.

We also have these butterflies. Ava got a butterfly pavillion for Christmas and it came with a certificate for ten catepillars. They sent them to us in little containers with food and they crawled around and ate for about ten days before climbing to the top of the container and hanging like Js. Then they turned into chrysalids. We transferred them into their pavillion and they hung there for about another ten days. Now they are emerging as beautiful butterflies! It was a lot of fun to watch the transformation and we will release them outside when the weather is warm enough.

Finally we have three tadpoles. Ava received this 2 in 1 habitat for her birthday. It also came with a certificate for a free tadpole, but it cost $8 in shipping. One of Drew's friends from school has a bunch of tadpoles that they found in their pool after not maintaining it this winter. So they gave us some for our habitat. When we got them they just had tiny buds for back legs. Now one of them has already turned into a frog. It happened really quickly! We've been experimenting with their food too. We read that they can eat dry dog food so we tried that, but it made the water really dirty. So then we gave them a leaf of spinach. They seemed to like that, but we also read they eat fish food and that seemed the easiest, so that's what we've been feeding them lately.

Come on over to our zoo any time and see what creatures we might be raising!