Super - Our Pieris Rapae Butterfly: A diary of her life

Our little girl found a small green caterpillar about 3 weeks ago in our Brussell sprouts patch. She played with the thing the whole day. We took her shopping, to the park and everywhere we went that day. Caterpillar almost did not make it when she fell in the floor of my car, hopefully it was found somewhere in the back seat. On the way back to the house, my 4 year old girl says to me: Mami,  I would like to keep the caterpillar, please go to "www.caterpillar.com" and find out what do we need to do so she does not die!!!!

 So at home I did exactly that. I found our green caterpillar was indeed a butterfly and not a moth. She was indeed a Pieris Rapae or European Cabbage White. We got her in a jar with some sprout leaves and a stick. My daughter wrote her love notes every other day. In about 1 week and a few days she made her little cocoon and we had a pupa.


It took another 2 weeks until this morning we woke up to find a beautiful butterfly in our jar. She is a she, as she has 2 black dots on each of her whity yellowish wings. Our daughter called her Super! as a she is such a Supper butterfly!! As she is really out of season, we could not let her out as she will probably freeze at night, so we kept her in. She has flown all over our house today and we caught her and put her back in her jar with some honey and apples to spend the night.

This is how we found her this morning



It is a girl! A Super girl! You can tell by the 2 dots on her wings



The shell from her pupa

A picture for pupa

It has been such a fun 3 weeks and a great experience for all the family. It is so amazing to see mother nature at work!