Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

After being barraged by the commercials on television, I ordered this Live Butterfly Garden for my son's birthday. First, buyers should understand exactly WHAT you will get in the initial "Live Butterfly Garden" pack: 1. A butterfly habitat "pop-up" tent, which is made of a mesh material on the sides, a plastic lid with a zipper to open on top, and a solid material bottom. 2. A butterfly food "feeder". This is a little plastic dropper. Once your butterflies emerge from their cocoons, you will need to make a mixture of water and sugar to feed them. This kit does not bring food for the butterflies once they have transformed. You will have to make it yourself, which is easy enough. 3. A post-card (mail-in) coupon and an instruction pamphlet. It is important to realize that you will need to mail-in a redemption coupon in order to actually receive the caterpillars. When THIS kit is delivered to your house, it does not have the caterpillars inside the box. You can also call the company (with out waiting to mail in your postcard), or you can go to their online website and place your order. That's what I did - the online ordering system asks you to enter a unique code that comes with your initial kit. There was an additional processing and handling fee of $3.00 that I had to pay for them to ship the actual caterpillars to my house (I live in Florida). One thing that I think ALL people who are thinking about ordering this set should keep in mind is... these are REAL LIVE animals. It makes sense that they would not be able to keep them in a box in some warehouse somewhere until the kit sells. By that time... well, let's just say that the animals inside probably wouldn't make it. So, you get this kit, and then you send away (or call or go online) to request your caterpillars. We did all that. A few weeks later, a TINY little box came. Now, here is where I personally had a little problem. I live in a gated community, and every house has a little metal mail box with a lock & key. Packages that are too big to fit in these boxes are delivered directly to our doors. However, if a package will fit into the little metal mailbox, the postal carrier will leave it there. Well, being a busy Mom, I sometimes do not check my mail EVERY day. It must have been 4 days before it dawned on me... OH! I ordered that butterfly - caterpillar thing! I RAN out to my metal "community" mailbox, and sure enough... there was a tiny box inside. Upon opening the tiny box, I found a little clear plastic container. Inside the container was a bunch of brown stuff (which turned out to be the caterpillar food), tons of brownish looking spider webby stuff, 3 crispy things (cocoons, or chrysalides) and 2 REALLY BIG caterpillars. Shocked and mortified, I called the customer service phone number immediately. I spoke to a nice man who explained that due to the extremely hot summer, the entire life cycle was sped up (during shipping, and no doubt sitting in my mailbox). It turns out that 3 of the caterpillars had already spun themselves into cocoons, and the other two had already eaten and grown to their maximum size. The customer service guy was really nice and he arranged to have another set sent out to me, FREE of charge. He recommended that we schedule it for another time of the year, so we settled on October. This man was so kind; he took the time to answer all of my questions and didn't make me feel like a dope for asking. I'm sure he's had SEVERAL calls like mine... but he was extremely apologetic and sincere. He made me feel better about the whole thing. Well, here I had already called my son to come and look at his new "pets" BEFORE opening the little box. There was no going back. He looked inside, and said "EWE!" He also told me that it did NOT look like it did on the commercials. The food was supposed to be sand - ours was a brown, jelly like goop. There were webs (it was actually silk) all inside and the cocoons were NOT attached to the top (like they were supposed to be). What was I going to do? I decided to keep the little container and follow the instructions. I pretended like nothing was wrong! Maybe we could save the two big caterpillars and still have the experience, I thought to myself. I will not go into any more detail about the wonder of it all - you will just have to get your own kit! I will, however, tell you that ALL of our butterflies hatched! Once they were inside our cool house... nature took its course (we keep the a/c cranked to about 70 all day, and about 65 at night). Maybe the cooler air helped them to survive. It has been in the high 90's here in Florida... probably about 120 degrees in that mailbox! DESPITE the weird start to these little creatures' lives... they really turned out to be an amazing experience. They all came out perfect. Once they had transformed into butterflies, we actually kept them for a few weeks, feeding them a sugar and water "nectar" that we made. The whole thing was messier than I had anticipated. The "pop up" tent definitely needs to be washed out BEFORE the other replacement caterpillars get shipped to us in October. The butterflies secret this red stuff from their bottoms (the instructions stress that this stuff is NOT blood) and it dripped all down the sides of the habitat. The home-made nectar was sticky after a few days and got all over the bottom and the sides of the tent. (I used brown sugar because that was all I had on hand, so I'm sure that didn't help the cleanliness issue.) Depending on the age of the recipient, it can and will make an impact upon young minds. My son is 9... so he was old enough to stick his arm in the tent and feed them (while they fluttered around his hands!) Anyway, that brings me back to my point that these ARE live creatures, little animals. They require CARE and you DO have to feed them. Then there is the issue of feeding them without letting them free in your house. This kit DOES live up to the hype. You just need to be ready for what ever nature throws in your direction! Also, in the event you DO get a "dud", the customer service for this product is top notch. It's well worth the price, and Amazon DOES have the best price around.