Do you have any of the tall red pentas in your yard or perhaps zinnias? They love the pentas to nectar on. If you don't want to release her, you also might try the melon flavor Gatorade. You can dip a q-tip init and they will sometimes crawl on it to get the juice. That is what they do at Breathouse Butterfly Farm so that the visitors can feed a butterfly. You can also put some on a clean sponge - make sure it doesn't have anything added to it for cleaning, of course. Certain types prefer it more than others but it is worth a try. They can go for about 24 hours without nectaring but after that I am not sure. If I were you and you see the least bit of sunshine tomorrow, I would release her. They are pretty adaptable to finding places to stay dry and get nectar on their own. I have some in my yard that disapear for a couple days when it cools down then they show back up. As far as holding her - you want something where she won't beat up her wings. If you have the flowers, they would be good both for nectar and for safely landing on. If you don't have the real flowers a spray of artifical ones would work. I use mesh hampers for keeping my butterflies in as well as old aquariums with the screen lids. Hope this helps! BTW, I had another Spicebush Swallowtail eclose from its chrysalis the other day. It had been in chrysalis since about October!

Hi Shannon, With the color change its way too late to delay the eclosion of the adult. So I'd let it eclose naturally and keep the adult in a dark secluded place for at least several hours to let the wings fully dry. The easiest from here is to feed it and put it outside in a sheltered place on its own. They survive bad weather on their own naturally all the time. Otherwise the best solution is to feed it and put it in a glassine envelope with the wings folded over its back and lay it on the shelf in your refrigerator that is the warmest. This will slow its metabolism and keep it calm. You'll have to feed it regularly, how often depends on how long you plan to hold it before you release it, but at least once a day. Personally I prefer to feed them highly deluted honey water. A cotton ball in a small lid (gallon milk jug lids work fine) covered with screen or fine mesh cloth and soaked with the solution works well and will not let the solution get on the body or wings (you can hold it all together with rubber bands). Very lightly hold the adult by the closed wings and touch its legs to the cotton ball. It will take hold, and when you see it's proboscus probing the cotton ball you can let go and it will usually stay there feeding for several minutes. When it looks like it has slowed down on feeding and is getting more active, carefully take hold of the wings and gently lift it off the feeder (be patient and don't force it - a little pressure will cause it to eventually let go). Put it back in the glassine envelope and your refridgerator until the next feeding or release. A note on handling adult butterflies... with care it does not hurt them at all to be handled. A very light touch will work fine if you master it, but special weak tweezers are sold for doing it as well. You can also make a serviceable tool with an old wooden cloths pin and two 1/2"-3/4" X 2"-3" strips of light cardboard (like cerial box cardboard, etc). Glue the strips to the inside of the jaws on the clothespin so they extend the length of the jaws, and grasp the wings with the very end of the cardboard. If they don't have enough grip at the end, cut a little off the end until they do. Lep tweezers and glassine envelopes are a couple of supplies that even a hobbyist should keep on hand. The tweezers can be obtained from entomological supply houses (like BioQuip, Carolina Biological, Ianni, etc); the envelopes from the same or stamp and coin shops, etc. Neither are expensive. Lep triangles can also be easily made in several sizes from wax paper. A year or two ago I posted how to make and fold them with pictures and sizes. Keep in mind the adult does not live that long, so after 2-3-4 days it should be released. HTH, Larry

The gc didn't finish his job, so the teacher was on the roof trying to get it finished. It is just a bad situation. I know we will have to pay the gc, but at least I will feel better about it AFTER he cleans up his mess. As far as ideal situation goes, no....we are not in an ideal situation, but we knew that going into the deal. The experience the students get from building this house is priceless, and I am proud to be a part of it. I am disappointed that when we called in a local contractor to help out...........he was the one who didn't do what he said. He was doing the underlayment so the students could proceed with the shingles. Time is an issue since the students will be on Christmas Break after this week. The students only work a few hours a day, so by hiring a contractor to work 8 hours a day we were hoping to have the roof ready for the students to put on shingles. I don't expect most of you to understand, it is a learning project and we benefit by only buying the materials for the most part. I just expect when someone tells me they will finish something by a certain date.....for that to be true. Had the contractor finished what he said he could do on time, the teacher wouldn't have been on the roof in the first place. It will all work out. I just wanted a sympathetic ear, I guess.

With temps in the 60's it can take 3-4 weeks for fescue germination.