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 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.

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.

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

Complete story appears in our Sept. 3 print edition.

Caption: butterfly.jpg – Aidan Sullivan peers into one of his containers housing a butterfly larva. He’ll take special care of the larva until it completes its metamorphosis to a beautiful Monarch butterfly. Photo by Richard Thomas.

Tagged as: cal-mum, Caledonia-Mumford