Milkweed Junkies in Rehab

The Second Half of the Saga.

In Part One of this deeply reported piece, you met most of the caterpillars before they were called up to the ceiling of the cage to assume the J position and then, in 24 hours, turn into tiny green peppers.

In Part Two, we follow the youngest and most contemplative of the caterpillars: Auden, the almost-rebel.

This is Auden, the youngest and also the last one of the family still using the caterpillar operating system.

As I watched him navigate the deserted and now barren milkweed stalks, all by himself, I felt a pang of melancholy knowing what he had in store. He, too, was inexorably headed toward becoming a small green pepper, a spooky fate by almost all standards. Not only would he cease to exist in a form that had legs or a face, but a few short weeks later, he would make a cult-member-like pledge to pursue the life of a professional butterfly. It would be a lifestyle choice that only offered him two to six more weeks of life, tops. So I began to wonder: Had I done the right thing by not exposing him to other career opportunities that might extend his life and perhaps serve him better? Sure, the butterflies do some beneficial pollinating during their lives. And yes, they are beautiful and inspiring. But come on: two to six weeks for a lifespan is a raw deal.

I went out for a walk in the moonlight to ponder the situation: Yes, Auden was the youngest scion in the current year’s generations of Monarchs. But did that mean he could never be more? Had he even been alive long enough to hear about how Prince Harry and Megan Markle had chosen to question the restrictions that tradition had imposed on them and decided to go out in search of a life with more meaning?

So when I returned home from my walk, I pulled up a chair beside the butterfly cage, preparing to run a few important ideas about choice past Auden. Unfortunately, my timing was bad. He had already made a big move in the wrong direction. Without prior warning, he had settled on a chewed up milkweed branch, anchored himself on it and begun the ‘J’ position.

Seeing evidence of this tiny act of rebellion gave me hope that perhaps it was still possible to reach him. But time was of the essence. He had, in front of him, a mere 24 hours of looking like a shrimp who strayed too far from the cocktail sauce. And during this period, he would be neither a caterpillar nor a butterfly. He would be Schrodinger’s Caterpillar; the Monarch version of an identity crisis. This was my last chance to try and influence his destiny.

I understood that it wouldn’t be easy to convince him to diverge from the life his father and his grandfather before him had carved out and hoped to see him continue. But I knew I had to try.

So I sat down beside the butterfly cage and read to him from the famous Mary Oliver poem, “The Summer Day” containing the oft-quoted lines about life that seem to resonate with everyone:

In my own defense, I feel the need to add that I did such an impressive reading of those lines, I almost brought myself to tears. So when I finished, I stood there a while, saying nothing because, quite frankly, I was stunned that I got NO reaction AT ALL.

But I am a fighter. I was not yet ready to throw in the towel. I still had one final idea that might be too difficult to simply ignore.

I staged a career day. And when that seemed to make no difference either, I gave up knowing I had done all that I could.

Despite my best efforts, Auden’s transition happened in the blink of an eye. He offered me not a shred of advance warning. I had tried repeatedly to be on hand during the action for all of my green peppers, hoping to capture it on video. I was never able to do it. In this case, one minute I was staring at Auden, thinking about how he looked like a piece of a shrimp scampi that had been flung into a plant by a careless chef at Benihana. Then the next, I was briefly interrupted by a phone call. By the time I returned to resume my watch, Auden had built a little pupa room around himself and shut the door. Farewell Auden.

Without further adieu, he had committed himself to the caterpillar annihilation process that would, in about 15 days, turn him into a Monarch Butterfly. Try as I might, for some reason I have never been in the room when this peculiar transformation is taking place. But luckily, a friend of mine, who is apparently smarter and more wiley than I, sent me the following video. Thank you, Brooke Fischer, for having more patience and a much much better camera. Behold a green pepper, wriggling out of his caterpillar onesie.

So Auden, as I knew him, was no more. It was now written that, having made this switch, his life would be 2 to 6 weeks total. That didn’t seem fair.

But then I remembered: All the caterpillars that are born in late summer and fall. get a kind of Papal Dispensation because they are part of the last generation of Monarchs for that season. That made Auden eligible to join the exhausting annual Monarch migratory trek down to Mexico for the big Monarch convention and Mardi Gras that takes place every January!

And as a payoff, that singular final generation of Monarchs gets to live eight or nine months instead of two weeks! By the time a monarch caterpillar hits their teens, I bet they all start hearing about this once in a generation opportunity. And who would say no to attending a massive Spring Break for Monarchs in January in the mountains of Central Mexico! Who wouldn’t want a seat at the big Monarch bacchanalia that only one elite generation of Monarchs a year is allowed to attend?

“But how do they find their way there?” you may be wondering,” How do they know the way to Central Mexico?” Oh, nothing. They just follow the magnetic pull of the earth!

No wonder Auden paid no attention to me. The idea of eight or nine months of that kind of Monarch on Monarch celebratory action almost certainly rendered the hum drum world of surgeons and firemen I was suggesting as pale by comparison.

So it was a happy ending for Auden, even though I didn’t actually see a single one of the pupas hatch. I just woke up one morning to a cage full of brand new Monarch Butterflies. All of them were ready to go, eager to plug into the magnetic pull of the earth and head on down to Mexico.

Once they are born, it takes them a couple of hours to get their flying mechanisms pumped up. Depending on whose advice you read, some experts say to wait 3 hours before setting them free. Others recommend 24 hours. I waited 24 hours just to be safe.

And so I bid farewell to my glamorous but thoughtless and selfish Butterfly children.

I hope every one of them managed to make it to Monarch-con. And I’m very glad none of them expected me to explain to them how to read the magnetic pull of the earth. Unsurprisingly, not a single one of them stayed in touch. I guess even insects who insist on dressing that exotically fall prey to a certain amount of serious symptoms of narcissism.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.