My daughter Katy started kindergarten this year, and loves to bring things in to share. Some of my cynthia caterpillars spent a week in her classroom, to the delight of the other children. ( As an aside, the other moms thought I was very strange, ordering caterpillars over the internet!) The caterpillars were in their fourth instar, and were about an inch and a half long, and were living in a "Critter Keeper" with air slats in the lid.

The kindergarteners have a tradition of holding a Teddy Bear picnic and sleepover, where the kids bring in their favorite stuffed animals, and leave them in the classroom overnight. The teachers then place the bears in various places in the classroom, so that the kids think that the bears were having a party during the night. Katy's bear was tiny, only about two inches high, and it took us a while to find it. Eventually we found it on top of the caterpillar container.

Imagine Katy's surprise when she found that a caterpillar had escaped during the night, and was sleeping on her bear's tummy! She spent the next twenty minutes informing everyone who would listen that her caterpillar had wanted to join the party. We then counted the caterpillars and were happy to find that there had been only one escapee.

My take home lesson was that caterpillars can escape through holes that appear to be too small for them to squeeze through. We named our errant caterpillar "Houdini", and transferred them all to a higher security facility.

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