butterfly house

We went to the most amazing place yesterday! The butterfly house at a nearby museum. Feast your eyes on this:

This gorgeous creature had just hatched out of the cocoon it is clinging to. It is still inside a glass wall full of strings that have hatching cocoons attached to them. A butterfly nursery, I guess. You can stand there and watch new butterflies emerge, if you are patient enough and don’t have two little kids with you. Here you can see the strings:

This one just blows my mind:

The diva of moths and butterflies is a freaking genius.

Twice a day they open the glass and the newly hatched butterflies fly out into this:

And this:

We went really early–no one else was there, which was perfect for us because the kids could run around jumping and shrieking in butterfly-sighting happiness, without troubling anyone.

Here are some of the lovelies we saw:

Isn’t that amazing???? These are just the butterflies I could get shots of–they’re all flying around your head and doing their butterfly thing and they really aren’t interested in posing. I’m sure I looked funny trying to track them with the camera. Such beauty, concentrated in such a small package!

Maybe there is a god.