Pigment, Not Blood

About a month ago, the students in my fifth grade class had a habitat in our classroom to raise butterflies. I do not teach science, so I was blissfully unaware of what went into this process, remembering very little about butterfly stages from when I was in school. When I heard they would be learning this, I was excited to learn right alongside them.

They started as caterpillars, just barely interesting enough to be noticed. Slowly they started to form cocoons on the side of the netted cage—this was when I started paying attention. I did not keep track of the days, but they seemed to be in their cocoons for a long time—at least a week or two.

One morning I walked into our classroom and noticed something flutter in the corner of my eye—it was a butterfly where yesterday there were only still, motionless cocoons. I went over to the habitat and noticed that a couple other cocoons appeared to be close to hatching. When the students started arriving for the day, a crowd began to form around them.

“One of them is about to hatch!” one of my students exclaimed. Those of us who were not already watching rushed over to look. Right before our eyes, a butterfly wiggled its way out of the cocoon, its wings wrinkly and wobbly.

Over the next couple of days, all eight caterpillars had emerged from their chrysalis as butterflies. I was looking at the habitat and noticed red stains all over the mesh walls. “Is that blood?” I asked one of my students. “It’s pigment, not blood,” she responded. “It’s pigment they don’t need after metamorphosis, so they shed it, kind of like they’re going to the bathroom” she added.

After a quick google search, I learned that she was kind of right—the red liquid is called meconium, and it is the waste material left in the butterfly’s abdomen after metamorphosis. I have not related to metamorphosis as I previously thought it happened—a quiet caterpillar crawls into its cocoon, goes to sleep for a while, and emerges without any struggle as a beautiful butterfly. But the waste, the gore, the shedding, the red liquid that looks like blood—that is something I can get behind.

The past couple of years have felt like a bloodshed—I have looked around the habitat of my life and seen red all over. I thought the red liquid was a sign that something was wrong—blood is typically not a good thing. But to think about the red not as blood, but as a necessary expulsion needed to complete this stage of my life has changed the way I see struggle.

A few days after all of the butterflies hatched, I went with my class outside to the school garden so we could release them. We unzipped the habitat and waited for them to fly out into the world. “It’s almost like they want to stay in this tiny little cage,” one of my students said. “It’s because it’s all they’ve known. Maybe they need a little help,” another responded, as she tilted the habitat on its side to encourage them to fly out. One of the butterflies found its way out and slowly the others followed. We watched as they explored the plants, the trees, the flowers.

And then we wished them well, hoping to see them again at recess.