The Mayos discovered three very hungry caterpillars feasting upon our parsley plant recently. In an effort to observe one of the miraculous wonders of nature, we placed the caterpillars in a jar, punched some holes in the lid and gave them plenty of leaves to eat so we could witness their metamorphosis.
I supplied them with a variety of greenery—parsley, tomato, basil, and other things found around the yard. But they only wanted the parsley (understandable, I like parsley, too!).
Come to find out, the creature known as the parsley worm transforms into the black swallowtail butterfly. I can say with a strong amount of certainty that’s what we were dealing with here.
Within a few days, the little guys were all snug in their cocoons, hanging from a stem within the jar.
Number one would later emerge, immediately beautiful and majestic, ready to fly. A few days later number two appeared, unfortunately not looking so good. This one was a bit wilted and not totally formed. Two likely did not make it very long, being unable to fly. Number three looked better, but its wings were still not complete (the parsley worm was only parsley formed . . .). It hung out on our flowers for 24 hours, but did not seem able to fly either.
It was very cool to witness the success in the first one. Here, I could say something philosophical about how this could parallel observing one’s own child reaching the mature stage at which point they want to fly into the wild, wild world. Or perhaps that some creatures exist simply for the reason of being food for another creature. Or that maybe there’s just a bunch of chaos going on, swirling in every direction—unpredictability and complex systems, accidents waiting to happen, and the unstable, fragile nature of life in this turbulent world.
I will just say that the healthy butterfly’s black-and-yellow colored wings looked fantastic.
Check out our section this month in which we tried to encapsulate many, many things that make the Murfreesboro community great. Certainly not all of the things, but I believe we included a good number of them. This could be an excellent resource for newcomers to the area, and I suspect that even many who have been in Murfreesboro for decades could still find some new activities within that piece. What do you think makes Murfreesboro great? Let us know: contact@boropulse.com.
What do you have going on? What’s coming up in the area that the Pulse needs to know about? Let us know of the upcoming events, new business developments and interesting local projects. Let’s see how the Pulse might be able to promote your organization, activity, taqueria, bank, mobile detailing business, lawn care company or attraction.
The Hummingbird Fest returns to Barfield Park on Aug. 30; no, it’s not the type of festival where attendees get to sample deep-fried hummingbird from various area food trucks.
The latest redundancy redundancy report: Did you know, “The Los Angeles Angels” translates as The The Angels Angels.
Look for BrackenMayo on chess.com, if you like!
The Lord thy God hath been with thee; thou hast lacked nothing. — Deuteronomy 2:7
