Monarchs

I have a friend and a colleague; a woman with whom I taught for a short while.  She owns a bit of land.  Among other things, she grows milkweed.

 Milkweed, as it happens, is the ONLY food that the caterpillars (larvae) of the monarch butterfly will eat.  We humans tend to view milkweed as a weed, and therefore, a nuisance.  We have worked hard to root it out of our gardens and our farm fields, and hence, we have left the monarch butterfly with severely limited range for laying its eggs and propagating successive generations.  Between the loss of milkweed, climate change pushing the distance the butterflies must travel on their annual migration, and large-scale logging in the regions of Mexico where the butterflies go to overwinter, monarchs are in BIG trouble.  Some counts put the loss of this beautiful, winged creature between 50% and 80% in the last few years.

So, a couple of weeks ago, my friend called me to say that her milkweed was just covered with growing caterpillars, and would I like some for my science classroom.  Oh HECK Yes!!!  So, now my room is filled with a series of glass aquarium tanks, with screen tops, housing the voracious and messy caterpillars, the pupa stage chrysalises, and a series of emerging butterflies.  My students are absolutely fascinated by the whole thing, and it has brought a lively dialog to life as they flock in and out of my room to check on OUR butterflies.

So far, we have released three of the magnificently lovely, orange and black, flying works of art.  We have seen them lift into the sky, flutter around in erratic, jubilant circles and then soar off; headed we hope back to their winter homes in the highlands of Mexico.  There is the scientific interest and inquiry that has grown up around it all, and that is very satisfying to my teacher's soul.  But there is an element of magic and wonder and pure amazement at the whole vibrant, insistent, nearly incomprehensible metamorphosis.  And, THAT is something I never expected.  What a gift for us all!