Butterflies and Other Critters

I was pretty impressed with myself yesterday evening, when I happened to catch a painted lady butterfly. If you've ever tried to catch butterflies, you know it's not the easiest thing in the world to do. We put it in one of our butterfly habitats with some flowers and sugar water, and everyone admired it for a while and then kind of ignored it.
Imagine my surprise then, this afternoon when Puppy came running in to tell me he had caught another butterfly! The kid is quick! So the second joined the first....and 10 minutes later, Princess caught her first! Little Professor finally managed to catch one, too, and we are now up to a total of six! Four are painted ladies and the other two are white, but I have no idea what kind they are. The kids have gathered a bunch of flowers and branches, and the butterflies seem perfectly happy...not that I would probably be able to tell if they weren't!
The butterflies are joining our ever growing menagerie, which is pretty interesting in a house where I said we would never have pets. We now have the butterflies, two tadpoles caught from a nearby pond, and Little Professor's Russian Tortoise, which is honestly the best pet ever. Mostly because it requires very little work on my part.
The tadpoles and butterflies are (hopefully) part of a lesson on metamorphosis. I say hopefully because so far, the tadpoles are showing no evidence of changing, and for all I know, all the butterflies are boys and we'll never get any eggs, let alone caterpillars. But I'm optimistic!