Fly Fly Away

We ordered some insects from Insectlore this week to study for Science--caterpillars and ladybugs. No problem with our caterpillars. They are growing just as they should. Well, we had a time with our ladybugs and I thought I'd share this funny story.

We do caterpillars every year--usually catch our own, but since it was so late in the summer and Hanna's science lesson was about insects, lifecycles and so forth I decided to order them. I thought I may as well do the ladybugs too while I was at it. I've never dealt with the ladybugs before. They came in the mail.

We followed the instructions perfectly. Placed them in the fridge for a half hour to send them into "hibernation" to make transfer easy.

When Hanna first removed the lid they were really still and calm and it seemed like this would be a breeze. Transfer them into our container we had all cleaned out and ready for them, and observe them over the next couple of weeks--lots of fun.

They almost immediately started crawling all around really fast. There were so many of them in that little container. I called for Jamie to see if he could help us out and get them transferred fast. (You can see his hand as he jumped in to help in the picture below.) They were beginning to crawl out of the container they came in, as well as the container we were transferring to, and we couldn't stop them fast enough.

Next, we put them and the container we were transferring to into a ziploc bag while we thought things out. We found another container and began to try and transfer them from the ziploc bag into this larger container. This didn't work either. They were not only crawling out of the ziploc bag, but crawling all over me, Jamie and Hanna. We were doing this in our kitchen, and they managed to crawl into the toaster, up the cabinets and then began flying around the kitchen. They were seriously everywhere.

We ended up taking the ones who hadn't escaped yet and releasing them into the backyard. (There was no way I'd be able to get the lid off of their container each day without them escaping to water them.) It was hilarious! We found them for a day or so around the kitchen and our downstairs:-). I'd thought the kids may be a little upset that they didn't get to keep and watch them as planned, but after that ordeal they had no problem setting them free.