Teen’s passion is Butterflies

   Many 13-year-old boys pass their free time playing video games, a game of backyard football or just hanging around with their friends. Aidan Sullivan, a seventh grader at Cal-Mum Middle School from Mumford spends a lot of his time walking through the brush growing around his home, turning over milkweed leaves and hoping to find tiny eggs; the sign of a butterfly soon to come.

   Sullivan has been studying the life cycle of butterflies since he was in third grade. If you ask him anything at all about butterflies, his answer will be quite detailed and likely very lengthy. That’s because Sullivan knows virtually everything there is to know about these insects.

   "Butterflies will lay their eggs only on a host plant that they know the caterpillar will feed on. Monarch butterflies only lay their eggs on milkweed plants," Sullivan explains.

   When he finds a plant with very small eggs on the underside of one of its leaves, he’ll mark the location of the plant and return when the larva is hatched. When he sees a little black and white worm, he’ll take the whole leaf and place it one of the dozens of clear containers and tanks in his collection. He carefully cares for the tiny caterpillar, feeding it fresh leaves and cleaning its environment daily.

   "I guess I’m a geeky butterfly boy, but I love this. I never get bored with it. I’m having a blast," Sullivan says while his whole face breaks into a grin.

   Ask him what happens next after he collects the larva and you’ll get the answer.

   "The larva grows quite substantially in a short time. When it is about two inches in length, it leaves the plant and turns into a pupa – the chrysalis stage," he explains. He gets anxious because he knows that within a month, a beautiful butterfly or moth will emerge.

   Sullivan has raised several species, including Monarch and Cabbage White butterflies and Luna and Polyphemus moths. But he admits, he never tires of the surprise and wonder that occurs when he watches the pupa (chrysalis) become completely translucent so that he can see the butterfly all tucked tightly inside and its colors are visible.

   "You can see the colors of the Monarch. It has a spur that pokes out first before it falls out of the chrysalis. Its wings begin to dry out and as they do, they open up and the butterfly flies away," describes Sullivan.

   He has a good friend, Michael O’Hara, who describes himself this way: "I’m a huge history buff, not usually into science, but this butterfly stuff is cool." O’Hara enthusiastically shares in his friend’s passion for raising butterflies. Sullivan and his family were leaving on vacation last year when one of the chrysalises was about to hatch. He trusted O’Hara to keep the container and watch over the chrysalis until he returned. O’Hara daily kept an eye on the chrysalis and after a few days, a beautiful Monarch emerged. Sullivan admitted being disappointed that he missed the hatching but knew he had left the situation in good hands with his friend.

   O’Hara’s brother found a long green caterpillar and gave it to Sullivan, who willingly adopted it and placed it one of his containers. Sullivan believed it to be a Luna moth, a less colorful species than some of the others. The chrysalis needed to remain in its natural environment, outside during the winter months.

   "I could hear it scratching the inside of the chrysalis and then it hatched. It was a Polyphemus moth with a six inch wing span!" he recalled. A polyphemus moth is one of the biggest moths and most colorful.

   Generally the butterfly lays its eggs in spring, but this year, with the cool temperatures and more than normal rainfall, the butterfly’s metamorphosis was delayed and Sullivan’s chrysalises are just beginning to hatch. An interesting fact that many people don’t know is that the butterfly has a very short life span after it hatches. It will fly around and land on a variety of plants, using its proboscis, a straw-like appendage to taste each one. When it finds one that the caterpillar will feed on, it lays its eggs and fly away. Within a week or so of this process, the butterfly dies and the process of metamorphis begins all over again, Sullivan explains.

   Teachers at Cal-Mum school have sometimes called on Sullivan to help them with raising butterflies in their classrooms.

   "One time I remember being called out of my class to help a teacher with their classroom butterfly project," he laughed.

   Sullivan has chronicled his journey with raising butterflies in a photographic scrapbook that he and O’Hara page through, looking at the photos of the different butterflies and moths that Sullivan has raised.

   "I like history, I’m interested in the Viet Nam era but I’m very interested in science too. We go together like peas and carrots," O’Hara said.

   "It’s just so cool to have the experience of having a butterfly sit on your finger and then throwing them out into the air and they fly away. We’re having a blast," Sullivan remarked.