The Armyworm Experiment

So, as summer gets into full swing (although the crazy cold windy days can stop any time now), I started the summer off by catching an armyworm in the backyard. Dad and I made a home for it in an old peach jar which we stuffed with fresh elm leaves and a couple twigs. Wait, what? You don't know what an armyworm is? Well, let me show you...

So, that's a couple of typical armyworm pics for ya. They can range in color from dark greens to browns with white and yellow stripe highlights. They're totally hairless and seem to be found mostly on the ground. We captured ours and placed in the peach jar where he stayed pretty much on the bottom of the jar, munching on all the yummy greens at his level. Kinda lazy crawlers, now that I think about it.

Within a few days of his capture, three or four I think, we woke to find a small brown chrysalis that looked like this:

We pulled the leaves out, leaving the sticks behind, and waited to see what would emerge. About two weeks later, on this very morning, we saw this winged critter at the top of the jar...

We grew a moth! How seriously cool is that?! Haven't ever done anything quite like that before. It was fun to watch it every day and see how things changed. I took the moth with me to school today to show my class and then I will release it back into the wild to be eaten, most likely, by a scrub jay, who will eat just about anything.

All this talk about critters has made me long for a new Critters in my World post. Perhaps we'll do that next.

Buggin' out for now. Hunter

Backyard Projects

The Backyard is kind of an "on going project" according to my Dad and the play conditions have certainly improved, but there's one area of the backyard we're still not quite able to access...the Garden. It's been filled with these white rocks that aren't a whole lot of fun to walk on since we moved in (9 years ago!) and the watering system failed so all the plants eventually died as well. Sad, yes, I know. Oh, and the pump went out of the fountain, so that's been lifeless as well. But...

We got all the dead cleaned up, the rocks are still there, but Dad put a new pump in the fountain and brought it back to life. He says he has a plan to make the Garden more fun, and after our first Garden Improvement Project, I'm optimistically hopeful (Do first graders say that?). So what was the project, you're wondering...

Yes, we built a birdhouse to stand next to the fountain. Using one of the leftover fence boards from the rebuilt fence, my Dad was able to create this. Seriously cool, right? I thought so. We had a lot of fun getting to the finished project, as I'm sure you can imagine if you know my Dad.

Everything was planned, measured, and cut by my Dad. And, despite her initial "Did you buy that from the store?" assessment, Mom was quite impressed with our finished product. If you remember, the last thing Dad built in the backyard was Project: Fort Hunter. That was also a successful venture, although prefabricated and with detailed instructions, unlike this one where we did it all ourselves on the fly with the materials we had available to us. Fort Hunter still stands strong. Now four years old!

So, the birdhouse is up, we're filling the fountain today, and then it will be bird watching time, hopefully. I imagine we'll have to find a way to entice birds to the front step of the house. Some delectable birdseed should do the trick.

Catch ya later.