#butterfly!!

[nightmareinject]

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[pandascanpvpmoved]

Finger fic-🦋

[12setsofchopsticks]

My Pet Butterfly

My wonderful friend Diane works at an agricultural high school and, a couple months ago, a few of us went to her school’s bunka sai, or culture festival.

Her students were lovely and we got to see the farms where they grow all of their crops; they even had many kinds of fruits, vegetables, and plants for sale at really *nice* prices so OF COURSE I bought a whole bunch of plants.  

Fig. 1: An artistic rendering of my plants.

After the bunka sai, we all went to Dianes house and Shota made us Japanese soup using the ingredients we got (NOT MY PLANTS THO). It was great! Nice work, Chef Shota!

We laughed, we cried (no we didn’t), what a day it was. At long last, we all parted ways. We thanked Diane for her hospitality and headed home.

But this post isn’t about Diane’s culture festival.

You see, a week or so after the culture festival, Shota and I were lounging around and as I was admiring my plants I suddenly noticed something that was distinctly NOT plant. And, glory be to the heavens, I was SHOOK.

“OH my god WHAT is THAT!” I yelled, a little too loud to be appropriate for the size of my apartment.

“nani nani nani……OH. My God.”

It was a spiky black caterpillar!

This little guy had hitched a ride on one of my new plants and had been living the good life in my apartment, completely unnoticed by me, for the better part of a month. But now here he was, munching on my pansies like it was an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Now, I was shocked, but I was certainly not disgusted. Shota could see this, prompting him to say “please don’t take him as a pet.”

I took him as a pet.

I thought he was kind of cute and besides, he wasn’t hurting anything (not actually true, he was devouring my pansy plant) so, half due to compassion and half due to curiosity, I let him be.

I named him Choo Choo, because he moved fast like a train and also because the Japanese word for butterfly is chou chou. Based on his markings, I guessed that he might be some sort of Fritillary butterfly, although it was hard to determine exactly which species he was. He grew quickly and, although I had a few minor moments of panic where I couldn’t find him, he never left the pansy plant.

That is, until it was time for him to transform.

One day, I came home and I noticed that Choo Choo was hanging from the pot of another plant. I knew that this meant it was time for him to go to bed, if you know what I mean. Sure enough, the next morning, my little spiky friend had transformed into an ugly, lumpy brown chrysalis.

Side note: Butterflies build chrysalises, moths build cocoons. Also, if you didn’t know how caterpillars turn into chrysalises then, boy, you’re in for a rollercoaster of knowledge because it is WILD.

According to the Google, caterpillars spend about 1-2 weeks in their chrysalis stage. So I waited. And I waited some more. This apparently proved to be false (at least for this species), because even after two weeks there was nothing. I wasn’t sure what to do, because at this point I was getting ready to return to America for the holidays, so I told Shota to just keep an eye on him and let me know if anything changes. But nothing did. For the whole two weeks I was gone!

I get home and Choo Choo is still there, dormant in his chrysalis. However, a few days later I noticed a change. The chrysalis had gone from a tawny brownish color to a dark, dark, almost black color. So here I am frantically googling things thinking he might be dead, but as I inspect closer I can see that the dark colors actually have patterns to them and they might, in fact, be wings.

I decided to relax and go to bed because I had to work the next day.

Work was fine, thanks for asking.

Anyways, I got home and JESUS, MARY AND JOSEPH look who was out and about!

Choo Choo had finally completed his transformation into a beautiful butterfly!

I gave him some sugar water and oranges and I think he was pleased. After some more educated googling, I determined that he was most likely a Chinese Tropical Fritillary butterfly. Look how pretty he is!

Of course, a butterfly doesn’t belong in an apartment, especially one as small as mine is, so I had to say goodbye to my beloved Choo Choo. I opened the door to my balcony on a sunny day and he flew off into the big, wide world. I felt like such a proud momma :’)

Bye Bye, Choo Choo! I hope you live a good butterlife!

[pandascanpvpmoved]

Hey paint, just just, shh, shh shut up you cursed heathen -🦋

I genuinely don’t know the context to this but yeah ❤️

[pandascanpvpmoved]

(: -🦋

I cannot believe thsi

[pandascanpvpmoved]

Hmmmmmm,,,,,,,,, no -🦋

[redacted-thething]

Red white pink for the why do you follow me thing

aww bud thank youuuu ur gonna make me cryy :')