king of the butterflies

In grade school, there was a regular ritual for the Monarch butterflies. Sixth graders cruised the ditches and roadsides for milkweed plants, looking for the signs. Eventually, there'd be chrysalises in the classroom that would be taken home to hatch at someone's house. I may have gone through this twice, once for the Cub Scouts. It's all fuzzy.

Less fuzzy is the sight of a couple of accidents: Linda's little brother or sister (several to choose from) got too curious about the chrysalises and disturbed them, and the result was a couple of unfinished butterflies, stretching their hopeless wings in doomed futility, trying to do the thing they knew how to do. 

A couple of years after that, my family was out in the van, a half mile or so from home on the road to the landfill, and we were suddenly engulfed by Monarchs. They swarmed and surrounded the vehicle, brushing lightly against the window, each for its fraction of a second of wing beating before being replaced by an identical specimen of the concept of Monarch butterfly. It lasted half a minute or more, with no view outside (Mom pulled off right away, and it was a quiet stretch), just the wings.

When Sarah was about six, we visited a butterfly place. We walked around, surrounded by brightly colored fluttering patterns that sometimes landed on one of us. We attended a talk on raptors with a bird rescuer. We left with a Monarch chrysalis on a twig, and took it home to hatch.

Now, some time before this Sarah was collecting acorns from the trees that overhung our back yard, and sometimes there were tiny yellow bugs in them, barely big enough to register as caterpillars, and after being annoyed that they were in her acorns, she collected them and put a couple of them in a jar with a twig and some leaves and expected them, as kids will, to form pupas and become butterflies. And one day, the surviving cocoon hatched out and we took it to the porch where it tried its wings and left on a breeze. Sarah was a little sad it wasn't a butterfly, but I was amazed and delighted that it made it all the way.

And so did our Monarch. After the requisite time, it burst out and we took it to the front porch where it posed for a bit on the edge of its container before fluttering upward into, I thought, one of the tall trees that neighbored our tiny lot. Once again, it made it.

I see so few butterflies now. They don't even have to be Monarchs. I rejoice in any and all, moths too. I'd be so happy if the lightning bugs came back here again. And now US Wildlife has announced that our Monarchs-- the paragon of butterflies-- are added to the list of threatened species in this country.

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