Letting Them Go

When the weather warmed up and the butterflies were ready, we set them free. Jonathan, Grace, and I went outside, I fed Grace an avocado, and Jonathan watched the butterflies. He talked to them and persuaded them, one by one, to fly away. It was very sweet.

I had to talk him into it for a few days, and at first, Jonathan was pretty sad that we had to let the butterflies go. But I convinced him that they needed to fly free and have baby caterpillars of their own. (And from the looks of things a couple nights before we set them free, they were getting ready to have those babies pretty quickly. Ahem.)

This was a super-fun process from beginning to end. I could have written a children's counting book quoting Jonathan's play-by-play as he counted down from ten butterflies to one. I'm sure it's safe to say that there's already a children's counting book about butterflies out there!

I think we'll do this again next spring!