My very hungry caterpillars in their cocoons.
Wilson with one of the butterflies that landed on him!
One of the many gators
Funny story from the trip. The portion of the exhibit with live butterflies is in the indoor swamp area of the museum. For those of you not familiar with the museum, this is a glassed in room with with a huge aquarium that is about 5 ft. tall and full of alligators, turtles, and fish. The room is connected to the rest of the museum, but separated by doors that stay closed I'm sure for climate control purposes. So for now, there are also butterflies flitting through this room with stands of orange halves for them to munch on. There were guides at the door telling us to watch where we step because the butterflies were also all over the ground (which is made out of decking material making it hard to see dark butterflies). No strollers were allowed and we were all tip toeing around with the occasional "WATCH OUT! YOU'RE ABOUT TO STEP ON ONE!" being yelled throughout the building. (Maybe they should have thought twice about having the general public mingling with their precious endangered bugs...) So anyway, Phil is carefully watching the alligators in the tank and notices that a butterfly has landed on one of the logs floating in the swamp. He then sees a pair of gator eyes floating towards the log. Then the eyes rise up out of the water and are trained on the butterfly. And SNAP the butterfly is GONE! Who knew- next to human feet, an alligator is a butterfly's most dangerous predator!!
I'm thinking that there wasn't a lot of consideration for the circle of life in designing this portion of the exhibit.
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