Celebrations for Butterflies
Why I scatter milkweed seeds to the four winds
The first monarch butterfly of the season is an event, heralded by much shouting and running through the house, by the grabbing of cameras, the barking of dogs who know something is exciting outside of the door that they can’t partake in (one of them being partial to chasing moths and therefore untrustworthy around the delicate wings of the Monarch). My neighbors think I am crazy.
We have lived here for two years; the first year, seeing the monarch caterpillars growing large and fat on the milkweed in the front yard, then seeing the hungry robins casting ravenous glances their way, I felt compelled to provide shelter for each and every striped body, ordering mesh enclosures on the internet, buying every local nursery out of milkweed plants, pestering family members to search for it. My neighbors in our small townhouse community watched this with some bemusement, as I combed through the small postage stamp front yard, looking for eggs and caterpillars and shouting like mad for my husband each time I found one.
That first year, close to twenty caterpillars happily munched away in their mesh enclosure. I sat next to them, eyes closed, listening to the contented sounds of their tiny mouths devouring fresh milkweed leaves, watching in awe as their tiny bodies grew bigger and bigger, until the largest one was about the size of my ring finger. I read them poetry.
Like I said, my neighbors rapidly got the picture of what kind of person I am.
Those twenty-some monarch caterpillars turned themselves inside out and into chrysalis form around the beginning of September. I watched them vigilantly for weeks, desperate to catch them in the act of emerging as butterflies. On the day the emerald green chrysalises turned transparent, revealing the growing wings of the angels inside, I remained rooted to the backyard spot with the mesh enclosures, set on witnessing the miracle.
In the last week of September, I called out of work to watch butterflies emerge, to rejoice in this private miracle, to celebrate nature. (Side note: college freshmen are surprisingly good-natured about class cancellation for butterflies, especially if you spend your outside waiting time livestreaming yourself reading poetry to the emerging butterflies. My students know what kind of person I am. One does not become a professor to be normal.)
After the first year of butterfly watching, a dear friend gifted me with three tubes of milkweed seeds, and I harvested liberally from the front yard milkweed. I planted that stuff everywhere…. all through the watershed restoration area at my college, in the drainage areas that the mowers don’t touch in my housing development, along the stream that runs past my mother’s grave in her well-manicured cemetery (a place that is itself an affront to memory, but that is a story for another day). I was a milkweed Johnny Appleseed.
This is year three. Do you know how much milkweed spreads when a dedicated neighborhood crazy starts throwing those seeds out like prayers in the morning?
The brood of butterfly that just arrived in my front yard in July of this year is several generations removed from those twenty-some monarchs that munched away in my backyard. Those first Monarchs made the journey to Mexico to overwinter, flew back, and laid eggs here in year two. During year two, there would be the returning generation, two more generations, and then a final fourth generation that makes the trip to Mexico again.
The monarch that we just rejoiced in welcoming is likely either a Mexico-returning Monarch or a first or second generation here, dedicating to laying hundreds of eggs over a short month-ish long lifespan, so make sure that the species can make it through the summer to make it back to Mexico again. Monarchs themselves have such an odd method of species continuance. They also are specialized eaters; if there is no milkweed, the Monarch caterpillars have nothing to eat and the species will not survive.
That’s a delicate balance.
We all know that super trite aphorism, right? The one about the flip of the butterfly’s wings causing a hurricane somewhere halfway across the globe?
Take that a step backward: someone thought that they would weed the garden and pulled the milkweed up. Or they sprayed some pesticide. An entire generation of Monarchs is wiped out. An entire family line does not make the yearly migration to and fro.
The butterfly’s wings never flap.
What a death of memory!
How many events are altered by that?
Facilitating and watching a butterfly life cycle over one summer is watching four generations of a creature try to continue and avert the apocalypse. It’s watching your own choices cause the destruction of a species. It’s more anxiety and triumph than I have ever felt. It’s feeling at once like the most significant and insignificant being on the planet. It’s planting your feet against a tide you cannot stop. It’s recognizing that even if you are one against many, you can still plant the flowers.
The butterfly that we just welcomed with all the fanfare a suburban household can offer, is a many-times-great-grandchild of the original Monarchs that I ushered into butterfly form in the last part of the summer of 2018. Any of those that returned in the summer of 2019 had children, then grandchildren, then great-grandchildren, then great-great-grandchildren who migrated to Mexico, in one of the riskiest migrations of the animal world. Then they returned again in 2020.
This year, in the midst of arguable the strangest year I have ever lived through, I found myself hyper-focusing just a bit on the butterflies. I catalogued the eggs, I counted the caterpillars, I treasured the chrysalises, I sang to the butterflies as they eclosed.
Like I said, my neighbors think I’m weird. They’ve witnessed me, clad in unicorn pajamas crawling on my hands and knees across the deck to find the caterpillars who have gone on walkabout to find places to form chrysalises. They’ve seen me standing under an umbrella amidst downpours to make sure that no errant caterpillars have drowned themselves.
I committed this year to allowing the caterpillars to thrive on their own on our back deck. I filled pots and planters with milkweed and with nectar-producing plants and waited.
That first monarch came in July. I watched her lay eggs and then a hurricane came; I admit I brought the one surviving caterpillar inside before it hit. I couldn’t bear the thought of him not making it after all of his siblings had succumbed to nature outside. He munched away happily in his enclosure on the patio through August and eclosed during our start of the year faculty meeting (held online) in the penultimate week of August. I absolutely sat outside on the deck, laptop on the ground next to the butterfly enclosure, awaiting his emergence. He flew off into a sunny day to feed and to establish a nectar-rich location to await a female.
Now we are at the beginning of September. There are over a dozen chrysalises stashed around the deck and two small, fat, happy caterpillars munching away on the milkweed.
I don’t know how many hours I have spent here, sitting on the small back deck, staring at them doing what nature made them to do.
A few weeks ago, I awoke in the small hours of the morning to a downpour beating on the bedroom window and staggered outside in my pajamas, terrified for the brood of caterpillars pulling themselves towards adulthood on the milkweed, horrified that amid the booms of thunder and flashes of lightning that I couldn’t find then, unable to sleep the rest of the night in guilt that I didn’t bring their small striped bodies inside for safe-keeping. I didn’t sleep the rest of the night and was outside at first light to search for survivors, I thought.
They all survived, clinging happily underneath of leaves turned into umbrellas. They were fine.
Nature is fraught with perils. A handful of caterpillars crawled off to I don’t know where to form up into chrysalis. I have to trust that they made it. One chrysalis fell, destroying its precious cargo when an overly inquisitive squirrel got too close.
I wept for it, as it was only days away from eclosing as a butterfly, the imago of the monarch.
Watching the monarch lifecycle and reading as much I could, I learned an entirely new vocabulary of scientific words that sounded deeply poetic to me: instar, chrysalis, eclose, pupate, imago, imaginal disks.
I peppered my long-suffering husband and tolerant friends with monarch facts: did you know that all the butterfly parts are already within the caterpillar? As imaginal disks? Isn’t that poetic? It’s all already there in image! Did you know that the migratory generation of monarchs doesn’t reach sexual maturity until after migration? They don’t have time for that! Did you know that a caterpillar goes through five instars before forming a chrysalis? Did you know that the fifth instar molts its skin that underneath is the chrysalis? They don’t form it from without! It’s all within! Did you know, did you know, did you know?
Did you know that the monarchs headed to Mexico begin their migration in August in Canada and arrive in Mexico at the very end of October? They migrate alone, not in flocks like birds, but gather in roosts or bivouacs together to feed and rest, to wait out a cold spell on the way to their wintering grounds.
Did you know that when they do arrive in Mexico, a cluster of monarchs on a single tree in the forest can number in the thousands?
Did you know that the arrival of the monarchs in the mountains of Mexico occurs at the same time as Dia de los Muertos? The monarchs themselves have become symbolic of the yearly return of the spirits of the dead to visit among the living.
Did you know that the monarchs are welcomed to Mexico with water left out for the thirsty travelers and with bunches and bunches of marigolds, said to bring in the souls of the dead, but also a nectar supply for the returning monarchs themselves?
How many events are altered by the life of this small being? Is she, for someone, a prayer answered? Could the flap of those wings start a course of events beyond just herself?
The last monarch of the season to leave my tiny suburban backyard will get as much fanfare as that first arrival, the shouting, the celebrating, the barking of dogs, the photos, the jubilance. My neighbors this time, will just assume it’s just me being me. The butterfly herself will flex her wings and head south, into a dangerous migration with my prayers with her. I will imagine her, roosting with other monarchs on the way, arriving in the midst of a festival, knowing that it is for her and the generations who had to survive for her to get there, landing, amid the smell of marigolds and incense, the mother, the sister, the daughter, to so many.
That moment, that moment is why I plant flowers thousands of miles away; this is how I celebrate the mothers, the daughters, the lives who have gone before.
