By all accounts, 2015 has been a good year for monarchs.
I can verify that without checking the winter habitat in Mexico, or monitoring the flyway. Up on the Sandhill we call home, we don’t have to look any farther than the rose garden out front.
We’re not really rose-cultivating people, but they came with the house and seem to be able to take care of themselves, for the most part. So they remain.
In the middle of the summer, milkweed plants started to pop up between the rose bushes. Milkweed is sacred at our place, so they were allowed to grow. Now neck-high, the plants’ upswept leaves became dotted with little greenish-brown bb’s. Telltale signs of monarch caterpillars.
Sure enough, a chrysalis appeared on one of the rose bushes.
A chrysalis is a butterfly’s answer to a cocoon. The light green sack is jeweled with what looks like gold stitching. A worm-like creature goes in. A beautiful butterfly emerges.
One chrysalis was followed by another, and another and another. They hung from the ceiling of the porch. They hung from the underside of the rocking chair. They lined up under the concrete overhang on the front of the porch.
We started to see caterpillars assume the position. For caterpillars, that means grabbing a firm hold of something and bending their bodies into the shape of a letter “J.” I’m talking like a capital J in helvetica font, not one with a dot or a cap on top.
From that position, the caterpillar sheds its skin to reveal the chrysalis.
Under the lip of the porch, the row of chrysalises was broken up here and there by a caterpillar in a J.
At one point, the chrysalises numbered 14, with seven caterpillars still on the way.
One chrysalis — the one hanging under the arm of the rocker — turned black. That’s not a bad thing. It’s the dark of a butterfly’s wings showing through the membrane about to release it.
The next morning, a monarch butterfly clung to the remains of its metamorphosis shelter, drying its wings in preparation for transitioning from clinging to the underside of a milkweed leaf to taking flight.
This miracle will happen over and over again on our front porch.
What led the mother monarchs to lay their eggs here? Why were these particular milkweed plants so sustaining for caterpillars? How did a one-inch lip of concrete get chosen to be a chrysalis gallery?
I don’t know the answer to any of these questions. And I don’t know if the answer will be different next year.
That’s one of the glories of nature. You don’t have to understand it to be thrilled by it.
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