Last weekend I was out in the backyard playing with my kids. We were kicking a soccer ball around in the grass. Once we were headed back inside I went to take my shoes off when I realized there was a little caterpillar on my foot. As I was staring at the caterpillar on my foot I realized there was one climbing up my shirt, it was about to reach the collar of my shirt. The funny thing is our grass isn’t very tall and I never once touched the tree out back, nor did I ever find myself underneath it at any point. I’m pretty puzzled with how one ended up on my shirt but I’m glad I didn’t accidentally crush them with the soccer ball we were playing with.

It’s been pretty cool watching them grow. I experimented with different types of foods like leaves, flowers, and dandelions. For whatever reason they seemed to like the dandelions a lot. Unfortunately something happened with the one I had found on my shirt. It appeared to have a prolapsed anus, at least that’s what I gathered from my googling. I’m not an Entomologist so that’s the best I could come up with. It’s fatal, nothing I could do. But the one I had found on my shoe is alive and has grown exponentially.

Caterpillar 1 has already molted at least once. My kids love going over to look at what it’’s doing. Initially they were calling it a wiggly or a worm. Since then they’ve learned that it is different than a worm and that we call them caterpillars. What I still haven’t been able to figure out is what the species it. According to my Seek app, it’s a cabbage looper caterpillar. Which will eventually transform into a cabbage looper moth, AKA, Trichoplusia ni.

Today, I was switching out its old food with some fresh dandelions and other stuff. I was recording my little friend eat when I realized that caterpillar 1 wasn’t alone, there was something else wiggling about.

Our new little friend is ridiculously small and a complete different species of caterpillar than the one I already had. It’s so small I had to use my pocket microscope to try to snag a picture of it. Now, I’ve taken pictures of cells and bacteria using a microscope but I’ve never had such a difficult time photographing a specimen than I did this itty bitty caterpillar, it was a bit shy.

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It’ll be interest to see how big our new friend gets. I transferred it to the new dandelion and it went to town on it. But now it’s even more difficult to find because not only is the dandelion yellow but so is my new friend. I didn’t think that through, but it appears to be eating so that’s a positive. I’m really hoping that I can show my kids the stages of a caterpillars life, they seem really interested in it and it would be a good learning experience for all of us.

Thanks for stopping by!