My grandmother always had an infatuation with monarch butterflies. She liked all butterflies, and kept a beautiful garden, but monarchs were her favorite. So, naturally, she passed that love down to all of her third-grade students over the years as well as to my mom and her sister, and my mom passed it down to me and mine. I can’t remember a year when we didn’t go to our milkweed plants, find the tiny eggs laid there, and bring them inside to raise them from the tiniest of caterpillars to full-grown butterflies. I always loved watching them transform before my eyes and then setting them free, but I didn’t realize until later how important this task really was.
In recent years, monarchs have become highly endangered, mostly due to habitat loss. They only lay their eggs on milkweed plants, since eating the leaves with their milky sap makes them taste bad to predators. The eggs are tiny, and the yellow, black and white striped caterpillars start out so small, you can barely see them—but after enough munching, they get to over an inch and a half in length. Then, of course, they form their chrysalis and emerge a couple of weeks later as an orange and black butterfly. There are several generations of monarchs every year, most of which only live 2-6 weeks, but those that hatch in the fall are the “super-generation” that lives for a few months, long enough to migrate all the way from the Midwestern US to Mexico and other warmer climates. I’ve never seen it in person, but I’ve heard it’s quite a thing to behold—thousands of butterflies all in one area, covering the trees and flowers. Since their arrival falls around the Hispanic holiday Dia de los Muertos (“Day of the Dead”), it inspired the belief that monarch butterflies are the souls of the dead passing on to the next world.
In a normal year, we take in 3-4 monarchs from our garden, up to 7 if we’re lucky. This year, however, was the ultimate exception with a grand total of 35. It was insane—every time my mom would go inspect the plants for eggs and come back with another, we could hardly believe it. I kept saying, “You’re single-handedly saving the monarch population,” and we were struggling to find enough space in our butterfly buckets. It just goes to show that while it doesn’t feel like one person can do much, a collective effort is certain to provide results.
When my grandmother passed away two years ago, butterflies seemed like a perfect motif to honor her—not an end, but a rebirth. It was September 1st, right at the crux of monarch season, and at her memorial service, we collected a bunch of milkweed pods from our patch in the garden and gave them out so her friends could start little milkweed patches of their own and help continue the cause she loved so much. We also brought some to a local park and added a new patch in a different part of our garden.
If you want to go for the hands-on approach, it’s fairly simple: get a small plastic bucket or bug container, preferably with a lid that will make it easy for the caterpillar to weave the silk attached to the chrysalis, and bring in a cutting of milkweed where the egg or caterpillar is found. Put the cutting in some water, and then place everything in the bucket and watch them grow! You’ll need to bring in more leaves eventually since once they get big they can munch through them surprisingly fast.
Once the caterpillar is ready, it will crawl to the top and form a J, then become a green chrysalis. After a couple of weeks, the chrysalis becomes transparent, and the orange and black wings will show through! When the butterfly finally hatches, the wings are sort of shriveled up and the body is very bloated until they pump all the fluid into the wings. Then they’ll begin to flap around, and they’re ready to be released! Don’t wait too long to let them go at this point—they get pretty antsy, and you don’t want them to inadvertently damage their wings.
Even if you don’t have the capacity to take the more involved approach, you can help tremendously just by planting a small patch of milkweed in a spare sunny spot outside for the monarchs to lay their eggs. If you don’t have space, find someone who does! Local metro parks and conservation organizations often collect milkweed pods, and you can reach out to family and friends who might be willing to help the cause. Again, habitat loss is the main reason monarch butterflies are endangered, so every little bit helps.
I like to think that my grandmother is smiling at the progress we’ve made so far, and I think she’d be happy that we’re continuing in her footsteps. And who knows, maybe she’s one of the butterflies flapping through our garden to say hello.
Image Credit: Feature, Laurie Wirt