One of the best things about working at an environmental consulting company is that I work with a bunch of biologists who I can ask “What is this?!” Last year my daughter’s preschool teacher found this out on the playground.
They had no idea what it was and used it as a lesson for the kids. The kids all guessed what they thought would come out of it. They had just released monarch butterflies so about half the kids guessed butterfly. Here are some of the other guesses: A seed, spider-bumble bee, beaver, dinosaur, ghost, fox, moth, cicada.
My daughter, who was obsessed with puffins at the time, guessed it would be a tiny baby puffin.
I couldn’t wait to find out what it was. So, I sent that picture to all our biologists and asked “what is this?!”
Here are some of their responses:
That’s so cool that she knows what a puffin is! They are so adorable. I have a milkweed plant in my yard that the caterpillars love. I wish tiny baby puffin would explode out of a cocoon. That would be awesome haha. – Shelley Lawrence
I’m shocked none of the kiddos said that a unicorn would come out of it, because that’s obviously what is going to hatch from it! Duh! – Brynne Mulrooney
This is what eventually hatched out of it:
It was a praying mantis egg sack (my boss tells me it is an ootheca)! If you look really close you can see hundreds of tiny praying mantises.
Jennifer Stephens, Administrator Extraordinaire