Every couple of minutes it convulses. I can't take my eyes off of it as I do the morning dishes.
I have to head to work, though. I have a feeling it is going to emerge while I am away. That is all I need. A long set of blogs with no payoff. Thing might take off into a ceiling fan and I will have no good ending. I go over many thoughts of how to contain it safely and finally opt for covering the entire plant with a grocery bag.
Should provide plenty of space for the butterfly to expand the wings, at least. Off to work I go...still pacing in my head. Hoping I can get home before the magic happens.
Instead, I get home to this:
Way too late. The rest of the family got home to see the dark shape of the emerged butterfly against the grocery bag walls. Once the bag was removed, I am told that the Swallowtail took flight and had to be trapped into a waiting plastic jug. There, a nice photo was taken just in case I couldn't see it.
I got it into a different position before we gave it a chance to see the world. We could tell it was a male by the color markings. Female Black Swallowtails are primarily black and blue compared to the generous yellow shown here.
The oldest decided he would help us release the butterfly into the wild. It was getting dark but not too much. I figured the birds would be out of the picture. I didn't mention the chance of bats finding it.
It flew up into the overhead branches of our oak trees and rested. We returned inside knowing we did our best to help this new butterfly make it into the world. It was fun to observe.
Now I will have so much less to do...until meteors in a couple of weeks. Swear I heard warblers, too.
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