The Wonderful Journey of the Butterfly

This beautiful journey begins From a courtship routine The male perch themselves on leaves And create a glorious scene Waiting for a female Just to fly on by Now he has his chance But, she’ll be the one to decide The male needs to find out Whether she’s been fertilised If she’s already pregnant He’s soon going to realise She’ll release a powerful chemical Which is called ‘pheromone ‘ That tells him she’s unavailable So he might have to fly and roam Soon after they have mated She looks for a place to lay Laying her tiny eggs Mostly oval in shape She can lay two hundred or more Just in a single day But she needs to find a milkweed On this beautiful sun spring day The tiny little caterpillars Start to grow inside Eggs no bigger that a pin heads And thats no word of a lie They feed on the milkweed And the enzymes in the egg Until these little caterpillars Start growing up really big Now when they hatch From their eggs They will eat and eat and eat Eating up everything Of those milkweed leaves They will start expanding Getting bigger and bigger Shedding their skin several times Now that is really clever Then they just stop eating And know their time has come For their stunning transformation Four stages have begun They’re find a special twig or leaf And hang them-selves upside down Then spin a silky cocoon Where they won’t be found It’s called metamorphosis Turned into a shiny chrysalis Inside the caterpillars’ changing Into a beautiful butterfly It dissolves itself into a soup That’s truly organised Inside a process is taking place It’s forming disc’s, a body, a face This wonder of nature you can see When they emerge victoriously This transition takes some time For the birth of an exquisite butterfly One of nature’s beautiful scenes Celebrating new birth in spring The reproduction of a butterfly A remarkable cycle, that does not die © Copyright KC.Leake 6th April 2015 All Rights Reserved