Butterly Pavilion

I have seen signs for the Butterfly Pavilion all over the place, but never really understood what it was.  While the boys were watching their New Years Day bowl games, the girls decided to go find out.  The first thing we discovered about it was that they have an entire section of the museum devoted to tarantulas and spiders.  The even let you hold Rosie, a tarantula who is about 10 years old.  Now, I'm scared of spiders.  The only time I will kill one is if I feel as if my daughters' lives are at stake.  Otherwise, I will call for anyone else in the house to come kill the creepy crawly things before they disappear.  Of course, I don't want Cambrie to have a spider phobia, so I insisted that she hold Rosie.  I was a good example and showed her how it was actually kind of fun and that her eight legs tickle the palm of your hand.  The whole time I was trying to put on a calm showing for my daughter but I was shaking inside and trying really hard not to flip out.  But Cambrie was brave and let Rosie crawl right up onto her hand.  She even asked to hold the spider twice.  I was very proud of her, but I still get the heebie-jeebies thinking about it. 

After we left the spider and beetle room, we found the tropical rainforest we had set forth to see.  At first we didn't think there were very many in the room.  But we soon realized that there were tons.  Most of them liked to congregate on the windows next to the warm vents, but there were just as many sitting on fruit plates eating, or resting on the leaves and trees all around.  We just had to be patient and look carefully.  Once we starting seeing the butterflies, it was beautiful and fascinating.  Cambrie thought their long, curly tongues they use to eat were pretty neat.  And I loved all of the colors on their wings. 

The Butterfly Pavilion routinely gets about 1000 different species of butterflies throughout the year.  Right now they have a lot of owl butterflies.  Looking at this tree, I almost didn't see the two butterflies at first because they are so well camouflaged.  

I was hoping to get a really sweet shot of Cambrie and a butterfly, preferably of one landing on her but that was too much to hope for.  This was the shot I got instead. 

 Cambrie took this picture of the butterfly near the ground. 

And I like this picture of Camille checking out this orange one. 

There was one particular branch near the presentation area where a lot of butterflies were just hanging out.  They had very bright and vivid colors on their wings.

Here it is up close. 

And finally here are some of my favorite butterfly-only shots of the day.