Given that were were not going anywhere for a while, I thought it would be fun to have another batch in nicer warm weather, so I got another set of 10 and this time the caterpillars were already a lot bigger when we got them, which we didn't mind, watching the caterpillars grow slowly was kind of the boring part of the experience for us:

they were fat within a few days

and they went to create a chrysalis quickly

Two of them were not attached right, so we used pins to attach them. One of those 2 never survived (not because of the pin that we carefully put outside of the cocoon):

Not long after, the first butterflies started to emerge with folded wings that got straight once filled with blood:

Butterflies are generally not afraid of us, especially after being just born:

Once all of them were born (there was a 2 day variance), we took them to our yard when it was warm and sunny:

they obviously liked our lantanas

this one already started feeding (you can see its proboscis)

we took the last one that was born that day

and found it a nice set of flowers to enjoy

Before long, they had all flown out away from our yard, to enjoy the world.

This left us with out with little gimpy, our special needs butterfly that couldn't fly and could barely walk.

Gimpy lived 9 days with our care, and we helped him be the the best butterfly he could be. We have a whole page with his story