The best pet to have as a college student
Spoiler alert: It’s not a puppy
Having a pet to come home to after a long hard day of college is so nice and therapeutic, but let’s be real: It is way too hard to take care of a living thing.
Plants, fish, puppies, cats, and even the unwanted cockroaches are the normal college pets, and I admit they are usually pretty great – but I have another pet recommendation: butterflies.
Once I found a caterpillar and raised it into a butterfly. The caterpillar had fallen onto my friend’s shoulder outside while we were waiting to go into class.
A lot of people thought carrying around a caterpillar in a plastic bag that once contained a PB&J was weird. I was going to keep him and show my boyfriend who was taking an entomology class and needed insects for his term project.
The caterpillar I found was an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, Papilio glaucus, if you are fancy.
He stayed in a plastic container for a couple of days munching on Tulip Poplar leaves until he made his chrysalis.
Usually butterflies will emerge from their chrysalis in a week or less. My caterpillar “overwintered” because the weather took such a cold turn.
My butterfly emerged in four months and two weeks, right after it snowed for two days.
Once they have emerge from the chrysalis, butterflies need to sun their wings for a bit. My butterfly turned out to be a male and he was quite handsome.
After he sunned his wings, he flew to my window and stayed there the whole time he was with me. He was very well behaved, even potty trained.
He only tinkled once and it was out of fear when I was reaching for my phone, which I had placed too close to his perch.
During that week I was obsessed with my new pet. I told all of my friends the story, about how I thought I was keeping a dead insect in my room for four months, but one morning I thought there was a mouse in my room and I just happened to see the butterfly had come out.
I kept showing pictures like a proud parent, and would stay home just to spend time around my new friend. I even held him a couple times. I tried to feed him, but it turns out male butterflies do not eat. They wait to mate and then they just die.
He lasted five days and a 250-mile drive before he passed away in a hotel room in Hershey, PA. He has been laid to rest by my boyfriend, who pinned him in his insect collection to be memorialized forever.