Old Leaves: Desperate Caterpillar (from May 2007)

How I loved our class's adventures with Monarch butterflies.  This post first appeared on the Limb May 6, 2007 when I was a youngster of only 60:

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Checking our classroom garden on Thurday afternoon I found our four little milkweeds completely denuded and even the stems partially consumed. I looked around to find the crysalis that I knew had to be suspended from some nearby object. It wasn't on the bottom of a bird feeder or the air conditioner or a plant hanger or the garden tools leaned against the wall.

"Oh well, I hope the fella found a decent spot", I thought.

Then I picked up the playground ball that had rested in an empty garden pot by the door for three days. It was past time for it to join its fellows in the big red tub inside the door. Then I saw the crysalis:

This Danaus plexippus, a wonderful Monarch Butterfly in its pupa stage, is the descendant of a mother who overwintered in the mountains of Mexico. In a few days, when he or she emerges from the crysalis, its cells will be completely reorganized. It will dry its wings in our big classroom butterfly hotel. My students and I will admire its miraculous transformation, determine its sex, probably give it a name, and, with great ceremony, release it to fly northward. If all goes well, somewhere north of us, it will find a mate and continue the cycle that will produce many generations this spring summer and fall before its descendants return to Mexico before the end of 2007 to rest up for the journeys of 2008. Life goes on.