How the Monarchs Found Me [Again]
A butterfly released late summer, 2018 along the Isthmus Prairie Garden/Bike Path (Madison, WI).
There is no rational explanation to why we like the things we do. We just do. For me, I just so happened to be a nerdy child that was completely in awe and wonder at the natural world. My childhood was a magical experience of spending hours in the woods and prairie at my maternal grandparents’ house. I collected many insect and amphibian friends (much to their dismay, I’m sure).
Most of all, there was the Monarch butterfly. I had tried my hand at rearing several different caterpillars in glass jars before ever finding my first Monarch caterpillar. I believe Tomato Hornworms, Wooly Bears, and Eastern Black Swallowtails were the usual finds. We ordered cocoons of great silk moths from my aunt’s educator catalog and watched those emerge. Every experience was incredibly special to my young mind.
I finally found my first Monarch caterpillar in third grade. It would have been late August, just as their season was beginning to wind down prior to the fall migration. It was a large, chunky caterpillar on a half-eaten stem of Milkweed near the sandy shores of Lake Michigan. I don’t remember why we were there, but I carefully brought that caterpillar home. Within a week it had gone into chrysalis and then emerged as a gorgeous, bright orange butterfly. I was captivated, and for many summers I reared these caterpillars into butterflies.
I raised Monarchs for much of my childhood. I don’t really remember why I stopped for the time that I did, but I imagine highschool and college came along and I just began focusing on other things as teenagers often do.
I finally rediscovered their magic in the summer of 2018. I was out walking our dog, Bullett along the bike path in Madison, Wisconsin. The area surrounding the bike path was a prairie restoration project, so naturally the Monarchs’ host plant, milkweed was present. We were walking along, just as we did every morning. Bullett stopped to sniff something, and I caught a tiny pearly glimmer out of the corner of my eye. I spotted two Monarch eggs glistening in the early sun on a leaf glittered in morning dew. Without hesitation, I plucked the leaf and brought it home.
That summer I raised dozens of Monarchs in the tiny kitchen of our run-down city apartment. For summers after that, I did the same–sometimes in the poor excuse of a backyard behind our building. Eventually we bought our own house in 2021 and I was finally able to create my own habitat for pollinator friends and register my prairie garden as a Monarch Waystation through Monarch Watch, a dream of mine.
Usually this is where one might say, “the rest is history,” but I feel like we’re just getting started. With the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s decision to classify the Monarch as endangered in the summer of 2022 and the pending case to give the butterfly Endangered Species Protection with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, this is a beginning to another chapter in the butterflies’ story. I just hope it will be a good one.
I’m not sure if another blog about Monarch butterflies is needed, but adding another voice to the conversation doesn’t hurt. I’ve found that spreading awareness about this iconic butterfly not only leads to concern for their decline, but that their story and plight is a gateway to opening minds and hearts about our natural world as a whole. The closer we connect ourselves to our environment, the better a chance it has.
Thanks for listening.
~Emily