Pests to Pets

We have a grafted lemon plant in a large pot at home. It bore fruit several times but after a while it stopped because of all the caterpillars who always seemed to manage to finish all its leaves. I used to take them out one by one and transfer them to a nearby empty grassy lot but more of them just kept popping up. I eventually surrendered and accepted my lemon tree’s fate. But after some time, I noticed more butterflies lingering in our backyard. I even found one in the middle of emerging from its cocoon on the lemon tree! So when the lemon tree grew back its leaves and the caterpillars invaded again, I picked them all and put them inside a large clear jar with plenty of excess lemon leaves. Everyday, they would consume the leaves and I would put a fresh batch. I even had to substitute calamansi leaves in between feedings just to make sure our the lemon plant won’t ran out of leaves. My kids enjoyed watching them grew into big fat caterpillars and remembered the book they used to read — The Very Hungry Caterpillar. At last when the time finally came one morning, I excitedly called my kids to meet their pretty now winged friends! Honestly, it brought back the kid in me too… Only now I finally got to touch one! 🙂