Bow-chicka bow-wow.

I have some kind of Butterfly Brothel going on at my house.

We bought Hannah a butterfly habitat. It comes with a cup full of caterpillars and caterpillar food-goop, and a kind of pop-up tent to hang the chrysalises in once they're all wrapped up. Our kit came with 6 caterpillars, and they all managed to pupate and eventually emerge.  The first three came out Tuesday, and the others on Wednesday. We filled up the little feeder cup with sugar-water and watched them for another day before we decided they were getting antsy and needed to go.

By the time we got home this afternoon it had started to rain, so we waited until after dinner to take the pop-up tent outside. by the time I got those little suckers out there, 4 of our 6 butterflies were gettin' it on. Seemed a little precocious to me.  But butterflies only live for about 2 weeks, so I guess they can't waste a lot of time making sure their religious beliefs and genetic profiles are compatible and stuff like that.

So the first two butterflies take off, and who could blame them.  I wouldn't want to hang around that scene either.  The other four are paired off, so I'm hoping they can wrap things up before the rain starts again.  I manage to jostle the habitat around enough to break up one party, and they fly off. This pair includes the gimpy butterfly with the twisted wing that I thought wouldn't be able to fly at all anyway, so I was very excited to see him (or her) flutter away.  The other two, however, showed no sign of letting up.  Eventually it started raining and we had to bring the habitat back inside and hope they knock it off before school starts.

By the way, I did NOT make good use of this opportunity to talk with Hannah about birds, bees, or any other quaint euphemism for reproductive or recreational sex. She's six. I'm procrastinating.