My Monarchs

 

          I had four Monarchs get born in one week. Two females...

... and two males.

 

          My new caterpillar feeding house turned out to be a bust. We made a frame with four sides and a removable top and bottom. The top isn’t a snug fit and my cats are escaping. I first became aware of it when I found a chrysalis on the outside of the box.

          Another day I was cleaning the box and one of the little cats was up on the side. Rather than handle him, I thought to just leave him there while I cleaned, then just put the box back together and he’d be none the wiser.

I set the frame down between the arms of the patio chair along with the lid and went to work. I kept my eye on him and checked several times while I was cleaning and he hadn’t moved! Nope! Not one bit!

          I don’t clean the box every day, usually every other day, but I do put fresh leaves in a couple of times during the day. So when I clean there’s a lot of leaves to sort through. The edges of the leaves roll as they dry and you have to unroll them — without squashing a ‘pillar, and check. The little guys hide in the rolls sometimes.

I’ll set the old leaves off to the side where I’ll leave them for another day. That way if I missed one of the little cats I might be able to spot him before tossing the leaves out.

I finished cleaning and reached for the frame to put the box back together, and the caterpillar was gone! I couldn’t believe it!

          How fast can they move? I wondered and checked the entire frame, He wasn’t there. Gingerly I checked the chair cushion, front, back, top, bottom, and sides. He wasn’t anywhere on there. I tipped the chair up and looked under. Nothing. I scanned the grass. He was nowhere to be found.  

          What could I do?

          I did what we all do in times of trouble; I said a little prayer.

          Lord, I know that all life is created by You and is precious in Your sight. This little guy is gonna starve if I don’t find him. The closest milkweed plant is miles away in caterpillar terms. Help me to spot him.

          Guess what happened next?

          “You found him?” you guess.

          Nope. I didn’t. I walked away thinking I’d check back in little while. If he’s down in the grass it would give him time to come up on top.

          Several times that afternoon I searched the entire area again and again to no avail. Then, out of the blue, it hit me.

          Put milkweed leaves down!

          I just know you guys would’ve of thought of this right away but it took me hours to think of it. Even then, I’m not so sure it was me that thought of it.

          I scattered the old leaves I’d cleaned from the feeding box onto the grass and waited.

          Nothing the rest of that day.

          But to my delight I found him the next day, mid-morning.

          I know you’re not gonna believe this next part — then again, knowing me and knowing I’m not a fast thinker, maybe you will.

          Can you guess what I did with the ‘pillar once I found him?

          Don’t laugh.

          “Oh no, Peg! Don’t tell me!”

          Yep. I put him right back in the same box he was in when he escaped.

          I know you’re just gonna be shocked when I tell you that I lost him for a second time, aren’t you?

          Yeah. Not so much, are you.

          He escaped again. This time right out of the feeding house when the lid was on. I looked for him but didn’t find him. A few hours later I found him on the leaves scattered in the grass. This time I resurrected my old feeding box and put him and my other ‘pillars in that.

          Right now, as I write, I have four caterpillars and thirteen chrysalises. But I know one Monarch has died in his chrysalis and I suspect another one is dead too. There’s a leg sticking out of it and no more activity for two days. If they’re not strong enough to break out on their own, they won’t survive anyway, so I didn’t try to help.

          “Peg, why are you foolin’ with Monarchs?” you ask.

          Because it’s cool, for one thing, to watch the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly. For another, the Monarchs need all the help they can get. Their population is in decline. They’re not legally listed as endangered but conservation groups have petitioned the government to add them to the Endangered Species Act list.

“What’s the deal?” you ask.

Monarch caterpillars eat only one thing and one thing only. Milkweed. And it’s disappearing. Farmers are better at getting rid of it from their fields and roadside mowing and herbicide use is taking out a lot more of them. We can all help by planting milkweed.

The female butterfly typically lays between three and five hundred eggs during her lifetime but can lay as many as a thousand. She’ll glue each egg individually on the underside of a milkweed leaf. So you’re not gonna ever see a cluster of Monarch caterpillar eggs, it’ll be just a single one.  After a few days they hatch into tiny little caterpillars. Two weeks of gorging on milkweed leaves results in a ten-day nap inside their little beds and they wake up fresh and new.

As for us, Mike and me, we already let as much milkweed grow as’ll grow. We have three major stands of it here at our mountain home. One of them is in the middle of the yard and Mike mows around it for me. I’m hoping that by bringing the ‘pillars in and raising them in a house, I can protect a few more of them from their natural predators.

Believe it or not, a growing demand for avocados sourced from Mexico is another threat to the Monarchs. People who live near the Monarch wintering grounds need good ways to make a living. Unfortunately, that means they cut down the forest and replace it with avocado plantations.

Another culprit is climate change. Monarchs are sensitive to temperature and weather changes. They depend on that to tell them when to reproduce and when to migrate.

Have you ever seen a Monarch migration? I was once in the middle of a migrating herd of Monarchs once and it was so awesome, I remember it to this day.

How about some migration facts?

Monarchs in North America are divided into two main groups. The western Monarchs breed west of the Rocky Mountains and overwinter in southern California. The eastern Monarchs breed in the Great Plains and Canada and overwinter in Central Mexico.

Monarchs live between two and six weeks. Except the last generation born in late summer. Those can live eight months because they’re the ones that’ll migrate.

The migraters don’t become sexually mature, which is called reproductive diapause, and it’s thought that helps them to live longer.

Some Monarchs make a journey of three thousand miles! Hard to imagine those delicate-looking things making a trip like that but they do.

Monarchs store enough fat so they don’t need eat when they’re overwintering. They do need to drink though.

Once spring arrives, they start their way north. They’ll stop someplace like Texas and lay the first generation of eggs. Those hatch then continue north. It may take four or five generations before they reach Canada.

          And that’s it. That’s my Monarch story.

          Let’s call this one done.