by Fran Syverson
Breathlessly, I rushed to answer the phone.
“Where were you?” my son asked.
“I was outside transplanting caterpillars,” I replied. “It’s a long story.”
And it is. It started last season when I found several black-, yellow- and white-striped worms had stripped bare a couple of my rather woebegone plants-weeds, actually. Since my daughter gathers all kinds of rocks, seeds, shells, bugs and worms to use in the museum where she works, I scarcely needed to ask whether she was interested. I was, however, unprepared for her delight when she saw them.
“They’re monarchs!” she exclaimed. And it was but a few days before she reported they’d spun their chrysalises, eagerly watched by her museum youth group. Not much later monarch butterflies emerged and were released.
Then a couple of weeks ago, I noticed a lovely black-and-orange butterfly hovering over this season’s woebegone plant. But by now I’d learned that it was a milkweed, the only plant on which, in Nature’s incalculable wisdom, the monarch will lay its eggs. Aha! Perhaps we’d have more caterpillars, I hoped. And indeed we did. And indeed they began hungrily stripping the leaves.
It was to be several days before I could get the caterpillars to my daughter. A science-teacher neighbor, who is even more fascinated by such creatures than I, came to my rescue. She had a butterfly cage, an expandable net contraption, which she’d lend me. One by one, I clipped the stems to which the caterpillars were clinging and munching, and stuck them into the cage. Sometimes I had to cut extra leaves because they’d devoured everything in sight.
Alas! I soon discovered that the caterpillars were crawling all the way up the two-foot cage, attempting, I thought, to escape. They were even clinging perilously to the plastic top of the cage. I was sure that in my desire to tame Nature, I was actually killing them. My more-knowledgeable friend assured me that, no, when they get ready to spin their chrysalises the caterpillars climb to a higher spot to do it.
“Are they shaped like J’s yet?” she asked.
“J’s?? I don’t think so,” I told her. But within a few hours that’s exactly what they were doing-shaping into J’s. Then by the next morning five of them had become chrysalises hanging onto the plastic top.
Every day or two, I’d find a couple more caterpillars on the milkweed. Into the cage they went. But it was still going to be days before my daughter could get them. She fretted that they’d have run through their whole cycle before she’d have them at the museum.
“Why don’t you try freezing one?” she asked. That seemed a cruel thing to do-but in the interests of science, I popped one into a plastic bag and froze him. Or her, as the case might be. The neighbor suggested a milder experiment: why not put one just into the fridge? So I did, meanwhile thinking, “This is getting to be ridiculous!”
New caterpillars continued to appear and I continued to put them into the cage. Eagerly I kept an eye on them, for I wanted to watch them spin their little cocoons. It never happened. They always managed to do it when I wasn’t looking. One day we had lunch on the patio, and seven of them were hanging in their “J” shapes when I went inside about 12:45. When I checked at 3:30, ALL of them were now chrysalises! I couldn’t believe it. Their chrysalises, by the way, are a silky, soft-looking, inch-long, pale green creation, simply lovely.
The day came to part with my fascinating friends. My daughter happily drove off to the museum with them, including ones I’d chilled. She did comment, however, that “to think they’ve done this by themselves all these years without any help from us!” And we laughed.
Still, about four more caterpillars appeared. They grow so fast that one day they’re an inch long and almost invisible, so well does their green color blend with the leaves. In another day or so, they’re three inches long, striped, and fat and sassy with all their chomping.
Soon my milkweed plant was down to bare stems. I cruised slowly around my neighborhood one afternoon, looking for any signs of milkweed. I planned to snip some off to take home to the emerging youngsters, but it was a search in vain.
Longingly, I looked next door where another neighbor also had a milkweed, but hers was potted and was being tended with care. Still, it couldn’t hurt to ask, especially as she’d been watching our venture from its onset. Generously, she agreed, and that’s when I captured a couple of my pets and carried them to her milkweed. And that’s when the phone had rung, and I told my son I’d been “transplanting caterpillars.”
A day or so later I spotted one lonely, mature caterpillar midway across my hot driveway headed who knows where. It must have been like crossing the Sahara, with no oasis. So I picked him up-yep, in my bare hands; had I gone mad?-and transplanted him to the potted milkweed next door. I placed him on a leaf with the other two or three still there.
By the next day, it was gone. So were the others. We decided birds had made a feast of them, but we were probably wrong. Our science-teacher neighbor explained that once they’re ready, they find a place to crawl up to and hang, and make their chrysalis. There they await the rest of the miracle and emerge as a gorgeous monarch butterfly. I haven’t located a chrysalis, but I’ll be looking for some butterflies!
