Ladybugs

For Christmas, Aidan received a Ladybug Land from Josh's parents. However, it did not come with any ladybugs. Those had to be purchased separately. For weeks, Aidan kept asking when his ladybugs were coming until I finally decided to hide Ladybug Land until warmer weather came, and the ladybugs actually would have a decent chance at survival. Well, warmer weather has finally arrived, so a few weeks ago, I bought his ladybugs.

The arrived in a tube as larvae. We had 12 of them.

Aidan loved to take them outside and watch them crawl around. Several days ago, they all finally made it to the pupa stage and they stayed there for about 5 days. While in the pupa stage, they don't move. I guess it's similar to a butterfly cocoon, as they have a hard outer shell around them as they change into ladybugs. When they emerged, they were yellow with no spots. After a couple hours, they had their spots and were a light pink color. We had pink spotted ladybugs, so they weren't the red variety.

Yesterday, a few of the ladybugs got out. We took them outside to observe, and while I walked inside for a moment, Quinn managed to get the lid off. We caught two of the escapees. One we set free on the rose bush and the other Aidan placed back in Ladybug Land. We found a third already squished and dead. I'm not sure what happened there. Poor ladybug.

 Aidan enjoyed letting the ladybug we set free crawl on his hands and arms before releasing it.

 This morning, we decided to go ahead and release the remainder of the ladybugs.

They didn't exactly fly off when we opened the lid. It took some coaxing to get them to move to the plants, and a couple climbed up Aidan's arms as he was holding their home.

Notice the one on his shoulder in the above picture.

We still have two remaining in the house as one wouldn't climb off the lid and the other just came out of his pupa stage this morning. I thought he had died in there as all the other ladybugs emerged several days ago. Overall, it was a fun experience and Aidan really enjoyed it. We happened to do this at the same time they have butterflies in his classroom at school, so we've been comparing the lifecycles.