Why aspen leaves litter my house

My daughter received one of those painted lady butterfly kits for her birthday. It came with a little butterfly tent and a coupon which could be redeemed for caterpillars. My sister, that smart woman, mailed the coupon about the same time she ordered the kit, so Sasha waited only a few days for the caterpillars to arrive; but even still, she could barely stand it. She set up the little tent and put ladybugs inside to pass the time.

When the caterpillars finally arrived, she chased the ladybugs out and set the jar of caterpillars in the cage instead. The caterpillars were surprisingly interesting to watch, like fish. They climbed around their jar and wriggled and ate the mush provided to them. Then – after quite a short time, maybe seven days – we watched them cocoon. I'd expected them to spin white silk around themselves, like tent caterpillars, but in fact they hung upside down and just sort of ... solidified.

The cocoons are black with a bit of gold. They hang inside the jar, motionless. They look exactly like what my daughter tells me they are supposed to look like: a dead leaf.

Caterpillars are interesting to watch, like fish, as I said; but cocoons, once they form, are boring. Watching a cocoon is like watching a rock. Or, I suppose, a dead leaf.

And so my daughter has been busying herself preparing for the butterflies: making sugar water, adding oranges to the grocery list -- and converting our camping tent to butterfly habitat. (When they emerge she wants to release them inside the tent and sit among them.) At first we set up the tent in the back yard, but it turned out we'd set it on a sprinkler head, so we carried it through the house to the front porch instead. She decorated the interior with artificial flowers, real lilacs, firewood logs and the eponymous aspen branches. It's gorgeous. The butterflies will love it!