The Flight of the Monarchs

The Monarchs have arrived.

I saw the first of them yesterday as I was leaving work. Monarch butterflies fluttering along on their random way to Mexico. It is always one of the true harbingers of Fall for me.

At Quartz Mountain, lo these many years ago, they would come through in herds... droves?... gaggles? ... in October. In the evening they would light on the trees en masse for the night. Some years there were so many that some of the trees seemed to pulse eerily as all their many wings opened and closed. Some years there were more than others.

I always feel sorry for them when they have to fly in rotten weather, and it's been rotten flying weather the past couple of days. Rain and wind, courtesy Gustav. As if it wasn't hard enough to fly a couple thousand miles on rice-paper wings. Especially since half the time they're just looping around. They must fly three times the distance they need to, for all the random loops and dives.

Still, I love seeing them. And sometimes, if we're lucky, we'll find a caterpillar around this time of year. It has happened for us twice. Always in September. So I'll keep my eyes on the morning glory and milk weed to see if I can find one this year, as well.

When Gray and I were first married, we discovered a Monarch caterpillar on the morning glory vines in front of our house. We spent an entire early October afternoon parked on chairs in the front lawn with beers, watching it curl up and turn into a crysalis, which is a truly bizarre process.

Two years ago, we found another one and kept it inside through its metamorphosis. Grayson named it "Antenna," and we got to watch as it morphed. We kept the crysalis tied inside a collander on top of the bureau, but unfortunately the butterfly emerged without our notice, and the cats, or something, pushed the collander backward, and the newly hatched butterfly fell between the bureau and the wall, crimping a wing. It never unfolded properly, and though we fed it fruit and kept it alive for several days, it was never able to hold itself upright, and finally Gray took it outside and killed it. Grayson cried. And he still talks about Antenna sometimes.

Just one of the many small creatures we have killed over the years. Antenna can be counted among the ranks including fish, tadpoles, red-eared sliders, triops, a mouse, ducks and the kitten that Izzy killed. I'm like Dr. Death.

A bit gloomy today. Guess the weather has something to do with it. But that's part of the appeal of Fall, isn't it? The wonderful melancholy of it. It feels good to feel bad sometimes. So I feel sort of bittersweet seeing the Monarchs laboring their way south through Oklahoma in September. I always wish them well.

Our neice, Jordy, lives with her father in central Mexico, very near the area where the Monarchs go to overwinter every year. Seeing them has always been on my Life List. Hopefully someday we'll take Grayson for a visit and get to see the forest draped in millions of Monarchs. What a sight that must be.