Seventh-grader Tearsa Cramer had a good idea of what a teeny black caterpillar was up to when it paused at the tip of her finger and bobbed its fuzzy pinpoint of a head around.

“It’s looking around to see if there’s any other land,” Tearsa said during Monday’s meeting of the 7th and 8th Grade Center’s Ecology Club.

The little caterpillar soon could find another “land” when it and hundreds of its cousins go up for “adoption” Saturday at the Muskogee Farmer’s Market Earth Day Celebration.

The Ecology Club spent Monday turning 250 clear plastic cups into temporary terrariums, where the caterpillars could spin cocoons and turn into butterflies. They’ll hand out the cups at the Earth Day celebration, the first day of the Farmer’s Market season.

Martha Stoodley, a volunteer helping with the Farmer’s Market brought a bin loaded with bush branches and 500 caterpillars to the Ecology Club’s meeting and explained how they grow into butterflies. She said she originally had ordered 30 caterpillars, but over the course of a few weeks, they “grew into butterflies, had sex and hatched more eggs.”

Ecology Club member Orlando McJunkins said he learned that “when a caterpillar goes into a cocoon, it turns into a liquid.”

“Then it turns into a butterfly,” he said. “When it’s done, we have to wait for its wings to dry before it can fly.”

Stoodley said the transformation would take two to three weeks. She said she bought the caterpillars from a science supply company.

Students cut twigs to fit into the cups then gently pulled the caterpillars out of the bin.

Tearsa said her caterpillar “felt like a little tickle running down your hands.”

The students will keep the terrariums in the 7th and 8th Grade Center science classroom where club sponsor Mary Beth Flusche teaches.

“How would the caterpillar find water,” the teacher asked.

“It gets water from the leaves,” Tearsa said.

The kits also came with a white meal that student mixed with water for caterpillar food.

Mikhail Jarrett, seventh-grader, said the food “was like all mushy and soft, like bread in water.”