Every year we mark the beginning of a very special season in our house: the first time we see a monarch butterfly. Monarchs are the gorgeous orange and black butterflies you see flittering all around this time of year.
Monarch butterflies participate in a truly fascinating and impressive migration each year from Canada to Mexico, which you should really hear more about. They’re amazing little creatures.
When I was a kid, even before I can remember, my mom and I went to empty lots and the edges of the suburbs in search of milkweed. You have probably seen milkweed everywhere and not even know it! Like all butterflies, monarchs love flowers, but they only lay their eggs on milkweed. If you look on the underside of the fuzzy leaves you may find a little yellow, black, and white striped caterpillar.
{An in-law of mine has amazing success in searching for eggs. I have never been able to differentiate a tiny white speck of an egg on the underside of a leaf from just a tiny white speck. I have almost never hatched an egg into a microscopic caterpillar. We just watch for the stripey guys.}
We collect the whole leaf and stick it in a mason jar with a piece of pantyhose stretched across the top so the little tyke can breathe. He will eat the leaf. You may have to replenish his leaf stores. These guys grow FAST, so they eat a LOT! Though, it follows that he also poops a lot, so emptying the jar a few times is a good idea.
Pretty soon, the teensy caterpillar is about the size of my 4-year-old’s pinkie finger. He starts acting peculiarly, too: climbs up to the top of the jar and starts to hang upside down. Soon his little hindmost feetsies will be attached to the pantyhose or the inside rim of the jar, and he will curl up a little to make a J shape.
Once we were really lucky and we happened to be watching when the magic happened. The caterpillar doesn’t simply spin a web around himself. He actually becomes the chrysalis. His body sort of melts or morphs from stripey ‘pillar into a smooth green cocoon with an amazing golden glitter around the closing.
Now it’s a waiting game.
Now it’s a waiting game.We check compulsively on our chrysalis to see if it has started to show signs of emerging, but the best way to tell when your butterfly is almost “ripe” is that the cocoon becomes clear and you can see the telltale orange and black of the butterfly wings showing through.
Once the metamorphosis is complete and the butterfly emerges from the chrysalis, he’s very weak. His wings are small and very wet, and his thorax (the black body between the wings) is very bulbous and swollen. The brand new butterfly clings to its broken chrysalis with its long black legs and spends some time pumping the contents of its abdomen (something called hemolymph, which is apparently the equivalent of blood in invertebrates) through the wings. During this process, the wings spread and grow and the abdomen slims down until it looks like the butterfly we all know and love.
There is no way to hurry the butterfly process. If your butterfly’s wings are still wet, she can’t fly, so you just have to wait. But you’ll know when she’s ready to get out and spread her wings. She’ll start fluttering around and will not be very content with the size of her mason jar.
We simply take the jar outside and let our butterfly fly away. Our favorite is when she comes and lights on us. Her feet have tiny spines that don’t hurt, but you can feel the little ends clinging to you. It kind of tickles!
One last factoid for you: once the butterfly has dried out its wings, you can tell whether you have raised a male or a female. Males have distinctive dots on their hind-wings that females don’t have.
Have you raised monarch butterflies? Share it with us!
