Charlie, Ruby and Chomper

This is not a salad.

We have three new (temporary) additions to the family.

Meet Charlie, Ruby and Chomper the Swallowtail caterpillars.

Our newest residents used to live in the garden parsley at the piano teachers house.

Now they live in a glass serving-bowl, lined with plastic wrap, on our kitchen counter.

Apparently, there is the teeniest-tiniest baby, that calls our counter caterpillar condo "home". You can see him in the picture above. He's the speck on the branch that is horizontally persuaded .

We'll see if he "makes it" before he's named.

I don't want to get attached.

We've been told that they will eat us out of "house and home" in parsley. Luckily our neighbor has a huge parsley patch in her garden and has given us unbridled access.

Then they will make themselves a Chrysalis. In a few weeks, if all goes well, we should be releasing butterflies into the great wide world.

Over the weekend, this trio has been wildly entertaining as they mow down their parsley village.

You might ask why I have wrapped my glass bowl in plastic wrap?

Well, unbeknownst to me, caterpillars have an amazing capacity to, uh-hmm, use the facility.

To put it bluntly, they poop. A lot.

Next time I see a small fish tank at a garage sale I am TOTALLY going to scoop it up!

The only down-side of this latest venture is that they really don't smell so good. Which grosses me out. But it's worth it to see how a butterfly is made.

Happy Monday!