Unexpected House Guests

Three monarch butterflies wait for winter’s end.

Young monarch butterfly waiting for the season to change.

The night before a hard freeze, several New Year’s Eves ago, I went outside to blanket a fruit tree and noticed several monarch caterpillars feeding on yellow milkweed I’d failed to cut back in November. I had a choice: Let them die, or try to save them.

I opted for the latter, gathered as much milkweed as I could to store in the fridge, and set up enclosures for five caterpillars. Having done this before, I knew my nearly grown caterpillars would enter the pupal phase within five days and emerge as butterflies about two weeks after that.

So I tended them. With one, I watched the entire gruesome, violent transition from caterpillar to chrysalis. With two, I watched their jeweled green chrysalises turn black, losing them to Tachinid fly infestations.

Three emerged, perfect, our guest room all to themselves, as another anxious wait began.

We had several nights well below freezing, unusual for Louisiana. This I knew would delay the emergence of wildflowers others called weeds. As I looked out of the south-facing windows where the monarchs sat and fluttered, I worried the blooms wouldn’t come in time.

I fed them by hand—Bigger Girl, Smaller Girl, and Butterfly Boy—a mix of honey and water, served in the smallest measuring spoons. They liked bananas and oranges, too, but not as much as their nectar.

They had their own personalities. Bigger Girl tolerated being fed but preferred to sit quietly alone. Smaller Girl was active, the one most likely to flutter around. Butterfly Boy was sweet natured and often refused to step off my hand after his meals.

Bigger Girl and Smaller Girl at the window.

Sometimes they’d all flutter against the windows at once, as if some unseen force beckoned them from beyond the glass. Solar flares? A whisper of spring?

On the afternoon of February 9, when I went in to feed them, I found Bigger Girl on the floor with her legs curled toward her body. I don’t know why she got sick. The Renaissance Man suggested we go outside with her. We took turns holding her until I knew she was gone. When I walked across the back yard to find a place to bury her, I saw the first clover blossoms peeking up from the lawn.

As the days became warmer, Smaller Girl became more frantic. Butterfly Boy seemed more restless. I knew they needed to go, but I couldn’t set them free without a fair chance they’d survive. I walked through the neighborhood and drove around in search of acres covered in flowers. Nothing.

On February 15, at noon, I prepared a box to transport them. With the sun so high and bright, neither wanted to be touched. Girl went into the box with a bit of a struggle. She'd always been very active. I closed the curtains and reached behind to get Boy, but then he slipped away into the crack between the panels, toward the light. Once I got both of them in the box, covered with netting, in the semi-dark, I realized I'd have to shroud them to travel. They would try to fly toward the sun during the drive if I didn't.

They sat without a flutter under a dark sheet as I drove north, determined to find flowers.

On the highway leading north, the median shone with the bright yellow blooms of groundsel. A cheerful sight, and a hopeful one, distracting me from thoughts of the bittersweet good-byes to come.

I turned on a rural road, which I knew led to a small state park. Once there, I drove slowly down the curving driveway in search of a sign that I could release the butterflies there.

Groundsel, patches and patches of it. And clover. Hidden somewhere, I was sure, wild geranium.

I parked, took the box from the car, and lifted the netting. I picked up Girl and placed her on the flowers. I tried to hold Boy, but he flew off into a shrub.

Moments later, Girl took off toward the sun. I bent Boy's branch to look at him, and he launched himself skyward.

There are no words for that joy.