Chopsticks and parsley: How this Prospect Heights couple ended up raising butterflies in quarantine
Unexpected house pets a reminder of transience in difficult times
When Abigail Pope-Brooks and Jeremy Neiman put their parsley plant on their windowsill earlier this summer, they were hoping for a better crop of the herb.
However, a very different crop awaited the couple, who had been largely self-confined to their fifth-floor Prospect Heights apartment since the quarantine began in March.
One morning, Pope-Brooks discovered dozens of tiny caterpillars on the plant. The caterpillars had hatched, the couple determined through research, from eggs laid by a black swallowtail butterfly, whose species only eats parsley, carrot tops and the like.