Homeschool Mom Failures...

I am afraid of moths. And I hate them.

There I said it.

I realize it's a huge admission to make, coming from the homeschooling mom of 3 boys, but it's true and it's about time I faced the fact.

It all came to head because of a luna moth.

Someone (I don't remember which boy) captured an enormous, hairless, lime green caterpillar. He looked like he could make something really cool so we dutifully stuffed him into the overcrowded bug house. We forgot about him for a few days and when we looked again, he had made a giant cocoon. Remember, of course, that cocoons are made by moths not butterflies, so it was a bit of a disappointment, but we figured we'd stick it out.

Somehow (I KNOW someone is to blame for this, I just haven't figured out who yet...) his cocoon got wrecked and split open a bit. Inside was this repulsive, disgusting giant brown worm thing with a hard shell.

I am not particularly squeamish, as most of you know, but this was gross. What made it even worse was that the thing would writhe and twist in there. Ugh. I am feeling sick just thinking about it. It could have been fascinating, I suppose, but it was just sick.

It got put on top of a tall cabinet because I got spooked one too many times by coming in to the room when it was dark and hearing all this rustling and movement. Yesterday the thing was making a lot more noise than usual so I decided we'd get it down and look at it. Well, much to my surprise, it had hatched from its cocoon!! Inside the box was this HUGE, hairy, white body with big legs, feathery antennae (another characteristic of moths), and crinkled-up wings. It was moving fast-crawling over the top of the bug house, looking for a way out.

The thing is, I think it didn't completely finish morphing into the moth. It seemed frantic, disturbed. Nick said it was like Frankenstein's monster.

Here is a regular luna moth:

Here is what ours looked like:

To try to calm it down a bit (why do I calm down bugs? I. do. not. know.) I dumped it out of the bug house, into a tall glass vase. When I did, all this disgusting brown stuff poured from the remainder of the brown shell in the cocoon. I almost lost my cookies.

We left it in the vase overnight. It kept flipping over and getting stuck and he never stopped moving. When I got up this morning there was all kinds of dusty fuzz on the inside of the vase-evidence of its frenetic movement all night.

We dumped it outside this morning. It didn't have much life left in it and it moved weakly for a little while. I'm sorry to say that I didn't really have any sad feelings for it. The whole experience was just too disturbing.

A little while later, Lily meowed at the door to come in. She was licking her lips and when we glanced outside, the ruined homeschool science experiment was lying lifeless on the cement, missing half of its body.....

A failed experiment. A shameful effort for an experienced homeschooler.

We came inside to salvage the experience with an art project and made this guy out of Sculpey clay:

I like him much more.