First of all, the sphinx moth emerged from the cocoon from when I last posted. It's not a frangipani hawk moth like I had erroneously guessed- at least it didn't look at all like the ones I saw tagged online... So f there are any entomology enthusiasts out there who are interested in identifying this moth, I personally challenge you!
After we had the sphinx moth experience, which at one point involved my cat, Beef Supreme, I found a monarch caterpillar egg on our only milkweed plant at school. We followed its development from egg to caterpillar, to chrysalis and finally to monarch butterfly. During the last stage of its development the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis suffered an unknown mishap and very unfortunately we had our first animal burial at school. This was the baby caterpillar, 3 days old:
This is the first nest that we have discovered at school since August. It was so well camouflaged in the tamarind tree that it might have been there all along and we never noticed it. We've been keeping our eyes on it now and have watched the mother bananaquit coming back and forth with material for it. Upon close inspection we noticed that she's used some of our classroom string in her architecture!
Anolis are like extra students at school. They wander around everywhere, they finish off the leftover snack fruit that we leave on the bird feeders. The daring little guys even wander into the kitchen through the open door while we are sitting down for lunch and eat any crumbs left on the floor.
On October 28th I got invited to the Diwali ball hosted by the Indian community on the island. Some of the children that come to our school participated in the dances and it was a super fun opportunity to visit with families and children that I taught in years past. The company and the food was wonderful!
The event took place at night and there was some difficulty snapping any kind of decent pictures of the dancing, but the fruits of my efforts paid off. In the second picture the children look just like robots with glowing android eyes. I love it.
