Butterfly

Yes, congratulations to Sacajawea, who crawled out this morning while we were gathered around the breakfast table.  It was very surprising even though we had anticipated it.  First of all, she has been inside the chrysalis for 9 days, and since the target time was 1-2 weeks, we were watchful for the past few days.  BUT!!!  This morning I noticed the chrysalis had turned dark, and didn't look green like before so I thought this might be close.  Still, I saw no movement until I glanced over 10 minutes later, and there she was, hanging on the stick.

We moved outside and in the sunshine, she stretched.  I thought that she would crawl into an upright position, and that would be the time to put her on my hand (or on Juju's hand) but she didn't ever move up on the top of the stick.  About an hour and a half later, I took a short stick, and she readily crawled onto it and onto my hand.  I had only less than a minute to move to the grass where I thought we could transfer to Juju's hand, but instead, Sacajawea fluttered off, across the yard and through a wire fence.  First flight, and she handled it perfectly!  Gone...

We have one more, Ichabod, who will probably leave us tomorrow or Monday.  We HOPE to get a little more contact with him.  It's all in the timing!