Flutterby

Like many people, we've been mindful of the plight of the monarch butterfly.  Their numbers have declined, and one reason is the diminishing amount of milkweed available to them.  That's the only plant on which they lay their eggs, and the only thing their caterpillars will eat.

We live on five and a half acres or so, and four acres of that was pasture for our sheep, which we no longer have.  So, we have been cutting that for hay for our horse. 

There has always been some milkweed around -- mostly on the perimeter of our place, since the sheep ate it, and everything else that was green.  Now, though, the pasture has been filling up with milkweed plants.  That's a slight exaggeration, but there really has been a lot of it.  It's not so good for hay that horses eat.

My co-conspirator made it her project to pull the milkweed plants.  She spent many, many hours pulling it, and reading about it.  It turns out that milkweed creates a big network of rhizomes under the soil that create many new plants.  So, she pulled them, and more appeared.  Then she pulled the new ones.  More appeared.

We determined it was time to take the chemical route.  But before doing so, we rescued numerous caterpillars for our neighbor to raise and release.  He has kids at home who love to see the process.

So, we committed herbicide, and most of the milkweed succumbed.  For those who are concerned, the fellow next to us has a natural prairie that has multiple varieties of milkweeds plants growing in the thousands, and we still have the milkweeds  around our perimeter, so I believe all is well.

That's where the story of "Flutterby" begins.

While passing a milkweed plant in mid-September, a monarch caterpillar was spotted.  We brought it, and a bunch of milkweed leaves into the house and set up a habitat.  We watched it eat and eat and eat, and then make his cocoon.  Then, after many days of watching, "Flutterby" the butterfly hatched.

It was very cool to watch.  But speaking of very cool, the early October weather was hovering around 32 degrees at night, which didn't sound like good butterfly weather.  So, we put lots of flowers into his home, along with bits of watermelon, having read that they'll eat that.  He did.

Finally a warm day came, along with 30 mile per hour winds.  So we waited yet another day.

Then freedom day came.  We took him into the flower garden, and after a couple of short hops from flower to flower, he started to flutter around like a champ.

It was nice to watch Flutterby fluttering by, and our hope is that whatever makes a butterfly head south in the fall made him  head south.  Hey, you raise them as best you can, but then you have to let go. 

It wasn't exactly like the first day of school, or dropping our kids off at college for the first time, but there was a little hint of that feeling.  When next summer comes along, I'm going to assume that every monarch that comes to our place has come to say hi on behalf of Flutterby.  Who knows?  Maybe they will.