I have a similar tale to tell of metamorphosis... with a twist. Kristi
Streiffert told of her awe at witnessing a swallowtail finally emerging from a
withered brown chrysalis. Last fall, my husband and I also found a
swallowtail. We were painting our garage when we noticed the caterpillar
attached to an overhang on the north side of the garage. It transformed
itself rapidly, and the resulting chrysalis matched the Audubon Guide (to N.
Am. Butterflies) photo for some kind of Tiger Swallowtail. The one curious
difference was that ours did not sling itself upright with a silken girdle, as
the guide showed.
The next day, we transferred the chrysalis into a "safer" viewing jar, by
carefully grafting a sliver of the original wooden attachment point to a small
twig with thread. Throughout the winter, we would lift up our two
daughters, aged 3 and 6 at the time, to check on the chrysalis jar on the top
garage shelf. According to Idie Ulsh, Seattle Audubon president and butterfly
educator extraordinaire, we might expect "our" overwintering Tiger Swallowtail
to emerge in the spring, when it's host plants were available. As that time
neared, we brought the jar inside the house, to make sure we could release the
butterfly soon after emergence.
We invested in the mail order Painted Lady butterfly larvae for our 6-year-
old's kindergarten class. Within a few weeks, those caterpillars pupated and
emerged as beautiful adults. Still no change in the swallowtail chrysalis...
except that it seemed to be getting a little shrivelled and wrinkled. That
change, coupled with the continued passage of time, raised a suspicion in my
mind. We tried to prepare the kids for this possible outcome, so that it
would not seem horrific if it happened.
One morning in early June, we saw that emergence had finally taken place.
However, as semi-suspected, instead of a yellow and black swallowtail
butterfly, we had a dark-bodied, reddish-winged, wasp-like parasitic
Ichneumonoid(?) fly! This taught the kids a lesson about the incredible
complexity of Life... and that miracles can take many different forms.

Denise Takahashi
GOLDENEYE ILLUSTRATION
Seattle