Soapbox

Disaster for Scotland!!

• So I’ve got these kids…
  Well, foster kids. In a way.For a few years now I have been raising caterpillars: ever since a common field milkweed popped up in my yard. Every school kid recognizes the beautiful monarch chrysalis with it’s gold tracongs, and knows the story of the amazing journey south to just one valley in Mexico to overwinter. I know  how monarch butterfly numbers are dwindling and how only about 1 in 100 eggs makes it to butterfly, and I wanted to boost those numbers by a few.And so I did- by a few.

  After the first year, I increased the size of my operation, and the scope. Last year Steve did some research and planted fennel in the butterfly garden. Apparently, “If you plant it, they will come” because the black swallowtails started laying eggs too.

  

  And now it’s 2020: the year when everything went to shit. The year of fear and hardship and death. I really needed some extra joy and hope and life, and butterflies seemed to be a good way to do that.

  By this point, the designated butterfly garden has become a mini art installation too.

  
  My birthday gift from my sister really cemented the look- and the feeling- I was hoping to achieve by having it: a place of peace.

  
  For Christmas last year Ted bought me a really cool pop-up screen house and I decided to use it for the swallowtails. I left them in the garden last year but so many caterpillars hatched and were promptly eaten that I decided to step in and hand-raise them. It has worked so well that I bought a smaller one for the monarchs, to keep the large ones from crawling out of the old plastic terrarium I used for the hatchlings.

  Pretty soon the Meisky maternity ward was humming along nicely. At one point I had 7 swallowtail chrysalises (chrysali?) in the habitat at once. Hatchings have been a regular occurrance for the past few weeks. One morning Ted and I had breakfast on the deck and watched a swallowtail and a monarch emerge within about 10 minutes of each other.
  
  I was able to see some moments I hadn’t witnessed before, like a swallowtail pupae shrugging out of his caterpillar skin, and we got some great video of the moment of the butterfly emerging.

  So despite being the summer of mask wars and bleaching doorknobs and anger, it has also also the summer of life. Tiny, flutering life. Other than 2 or 3 little caterpillars that died for some unfathomable reason, my kids were healthy and grew and perhaps 3 dozen have already flown away. I figure 85-90% of the eggs I found survived to get their wings!
  

  Now summer is waning. The swallowtails are all in pupae stage or hatched and flown and I am anxiously urging the remaining monarch caterpillars to eat faster.

  I try to put the habitats out for as much of the day as I can. I figure that these little guys (having no functional brain) probably get important cues from temperature and light and the angle of the sun, so I want to expose them to those things. The larger habitat has so much surface area and is so light that wind gusts are dangerous, so I have taken to putting a large rock inside each morning after I clean it and add new forage.

  A few days ago I took the rock out for some reason and forgot to put it back. I looked out and saw the large habitat was on the deck instead of the table! I rushed out and was dismayed to find all the contents in a heap in the corner of the container, including greenery, climbing sticks, 2 fat caterpillars and the broken remains of the glass vase their leaves had been tucked into.

  Feeling guilty for being so careless, I carefully extracted the kids, got them onto fresh leaves in plastic bottles, vaccumed all glass shards out of the container and put everything back in place. Within 10 minutes both caterpillars were crawling around and eating again. What a relief.
  I jokingly dubbed them The Crash Test Dummies.

  Yesterday I had some errands to run. The weather forecast called for for pop-up showers here and there, but when I left there was little wind and blue sky showing, so I left the  habitats outside with rocks inside both to anchor them.

  While I was out I heard thunder and texted Ted (who was working from home), asking him to bring the caterpillars inside if it looked stormy in our neighborhood. A few minutes later he replied that he had been working in the garage and didn’t realize that a storm was coming. By the time he did, the habitats with 2 chrysali and 5 caterpillars, had been blown- not just off the patio table but off the deck entirely. The 2 swallowtail chrysali in the habitat seemed fine but he had no idea the condition of the caterpillars.

  I drove home through driving rain, berating myself for being gone so long, not bringing them in before I left and generally being a bad foster mother. I arrived and found a mess. Ted brought both screen houses inside and set out old towels to sop up the water that was still dribbling out of them.

  I stood and surveyed the wreckage.  Disaster for Scotland!

  I knelt down and got to work. Cooing gently “It’s alright guys- I’m here now. You’ll be just fine” and other inanities that caterpillars can’t even hear, let alone comprehend, I set about extracting and separating the various elements of the habitat: soaked cardboard from the bottoms, plastic bottles,  pebbles used to weigh down the bottles, half-eaten leaves and 4 shell-shocked caterpillars.

  I got my microscope and looked at each one. Caterpillars are basicaly just skin bags with guts inside, and since none of them were… leaking anything, or had crushed antennae or legs, I decided that once again, they had somehow survived the disaster. And indeed, after a few minutes, they all started cautiously moving around on their leaves again.
  “I never should have named you the Crash Test Dummies” I said, shaking my head. “It was asking for trouble”.

  There had been a 5th caterpillar who was much smaller than the others and of him I saw no sign. I looked carefully at everything I took out of the houses. On the bottom of the big rock I found what looked like a cast-off skin from an earlier molting, but it was about the size of my missing charge. Since I couldn’t find him anywhere else I decided that he must have been squashed.

  I loaded the 4 big guys into the large habitat and decided to wash out the small one and put it away for the year. I sprayed a few spots with an organic, non-toxic cleaner and turned the hose on it, thoroughly rinsing it, and set it out to dry. Then I went down the basement to sew more masks.

  “Hey Trace” Ted called  a few hours later, “there’s a caterpillar in that little habitat.”

• “No” I said, getting up from my machine. “No there’ not. No WAY. I looked really carefully at every inch! Then I washed the hell out of that thing with a garden hose!”
  I hurried outside and looked where he was pointing and there, clinging to the seam on one side of the screen house was a small caterpillar, not much bigger than the paring from your little fingernail.I got down on my knees and genuflected. “It’s a miracle!”I called. “Thank you, oh God of caterpillars!”
  Behold Lazarus the Unbreakable.

  Today here is where we stand:
  The 2 swallowtail Chrysali are still hanging there and will probably hatch in a day or so.
  Of the big caterpillars, one moved to the top of the box and is hanging in his J shape, soon to pupate. The other 3 are stuffing themselves at a ferocious rate and no doubt already feeling that mysterious caterpillar urge to crawl away and change.

  And Lazarus, the cleanest caterpillar in the world, is at least 30% bigger than he was yesterday and seems as healthy as can be.

  He will be my last baby of the year to fly- assuming he successfully manages all the incredible internal re-arrangeing that butterflies must undergo to get to that point. He will be such a late hatchling that he will probably be one of those who sets out flying south and west, crossing a thousand miles on delicate wings, looking for the monarch valley to spend the winter.

  So if you’re walking down the street or through a park in a few weeks and you see a beautiful monarch wobbling his way south- take a moment to say hello.
  It just might be my little Lazarus.

  (What is Disaster for Scotland about, you ask? Here you go)