My Girly Entomologist

Remember my bug-loving little girl from last summer? Well, this weekend at the cabin, she found a few tent caterpillars, though not the hundreds we found last May. Like last year, she fell in love with them and played with them all weekend. This year was a bit different, though...

Last year, Hannah was content to keep the caterpillars in a fishbowl with a bunch of leaves and let them crawl on her hands and arms. This year, she decided that the first caterpillar she found was her pet and that he really wanted to play with her all day long.

She began by pushing him around in the little doll carriage.

She was thrilled that he grabbed the little doll rattle with his feet. "Look, mama!" she yelled. "He wants to play with it!"

Then, she tried to feed him a leaf in the high chair.

She decided that he would be happier if the whole doll house were full of leaves.

Then, she put him down for a nap.

I felt bad for the poor caterpillar and tried to convince her that she was killing him with all of her attention. She just insisted that he could not live without her! After two days of this, the caterpillar "escaped" while she was looking at the stream. Hannah was quite distraught, until she found another caterpillar a few hours later and started again...