Curing Butterfly Fever in Winter

What can butterfly-crazy kids do in mid-winter in Wisconsin? Why, go to an indoor butterfly exhibit, of course! The Monarch Girls, along with their younger brother, visited the Milwaukee Public Museum recently, spending over an hour in the butterfly wing. 

A butterfly with cabin fever?

We were given a free one day family pass to the museum about a year ago, when we delivered two recently emerged swallowtail butterflies along with several swallowtail chrysalides, and we finally took the time to use it!  Yes, you read that correctly!  Last winter we had two swallowtail butterflies in our house!  They pupated in a plastic aquarium, which was supposed to sit in the unheated garage all winter.  However, when one of the girls took the aquarium to school for show and tell, it never got returned to the garage.  Instead, it sat in the house, where it was warm enough to throw the little guys into thinking spring had arrived!  The museum staff was gracious enough to take charge of the butterflies and chrysalides after we managed to keep them alive about a week in the house, feeding them homemade nectar from plastic kitchen sponges. 

Do we have any pupae in the house this winter?  No!  We have one moth cocoon safely residing in the garage.  No more swallowtails flying around this house in January!

Back to that museum excursion, we hope you'll enjoy this gallery of selected photos from our visit.


Up close and personal!

Lending a hand.  The Monarch Girls were very helpful to other children that wanted a chance to hold a butterfly, including their little brother.

The Monarch Girls' little brother was so happy to have coaxed a butterfly onto his finger!  Then he saw the camera and plastered on a fake smile worthy of the dinosaur section of the museum!

What a beauty!

Enjoying time with butterflies.

A hands-on activity to help children understand butterfly scales.

"I want to be a butterfly!"

That's a pretty funny looking monarch emerging from that chrysalis!

Fun Card

Here's a card we just created at Shutterfly!

5x7 Folded Card

View the entire collection of cards.

Slowing Down . . . For Now

Monarch girls have released nearly 75 butterflies so far this season. The first three release days were the biggest, releasing 12, then 24, and then 13 monarchs! Since then, there was a 7 butterfly release, and a few smaller releases, along with a number of disappointments due to OE contamination. A few butterflies either died before emerging, or emerged with deformed wings due to OE. Though OE is spread by the adult female monarch when she lays eggs on milkweed (some of the spores from her body end up on the milkweed and are then eaten by the larva when it hatches), it is still a good idea to house caterpillars in much smaller groups to avoid contamination and other health problems. We've also read that it's recommended to only collect eggs or very small caterpillars because there is more of a chance that larger caterpillars have been victimized by flies or wasps (who lay their eggs in the caterpillars) before they are collected. This leads to disappointment when the caterpillars later die, having been eaten from the inside by fly or wasp larva--YUCK!

Taking all of these health/contamination issues into account, Monarch Girls are taking the time to thoroughly disinfect all 'nursery' containers used to raise our first batch of monarchs. Afterwards, we'll be back in the business of raising monarchs! We'll be sharing more photos of our process, conatiners, and the different stages of our little friends, along with photos of other critters that visit our garden--like the hummingbird moth that visited our scabiosa flowers a week and a half ago:

Hummingbird moth? What's that? Read all about the different types of hummingbird moths HERE.

Stop and take time to enjoy the butterflies!

Multiplying Quickly

Yesterday's release was a successful and gratifying experience. To know that you played a part in keeping the population of any species going is simply beautiful. To do so with a creature that you can see surfing on the wind in the sun on a hot summer day is even better, especially when you have witnessed the delight and joy that those creatures bring to people. There's just something about butterflies that make people smile!

After yesterday's release of a dozen butterflies, Monarch Girls knew they would have some big release days coming up. With a 55 gallon aquarium sitting on our front porch, its lid dotted with little green monarch chrysalides numbering at least 40, we knew we were in for an exciting week. After noticing last night that quite a number of them were turning darker, then translucent, the stripes of the monarch wings visible for all to see, we thought we'd have some monarchs waiting for us this morning. Alas, all was still in the aquarium yet this morning when the entire family went off to work for a long day at two local farmers' markets.

After a day in the hot sun, Mom and three kids came home in the middle of the afternoon, anxious to check the butterflies' progress. Imagine our surprise when we found that TWO DOZEN monarchs had emerged from their chrysalides in our absence! We couldn't even take time to count them all! We had to count the empty chrysalides after releasing them, because an emergency was quickly detected. Upon observing that one monarch was not hanging from the top of the lid, but was in a crumpled heap in the bottom of the aquarium, struggling to climb the side, it was determined that the best course of action was to open the lid of the aquarium and allow and encourage the monarchs who were ready to fly to take off into the hot afternoon sun.

The hope was that the monarch struggling at the bottom of the aquarium could be assisted to the top again, and it would not be too late for it to straighten its wings. Unfortunately, that was not the case. The wings were already dried too much to change their shape. Either the monarch had been knocked down by another monarch, it lost its grip on its own, or, and we hope this is not the case, it is infected with OE. You can click HERE to learn more about OE, but it is a terrible disease that can affect monarchs. OE is a primary reason our large aquarium is NOT the ideal location for raising monarchs, because the spores can easily infect other caterpillars. More on some changes we are going to make in a future post, but for now, there is the problem of the crippled butterfly. It would not survive on its own, and could contaminate others if it is infected. However, Monarch Girls were not impressed with the idea of euthanizing it, so for now, it is in a cage by itself with flowers on the bottom to provide it with nectar to drink.

Stay tuned for further updates! More monarchs will be emerging within days!

Monarchs by the Dozen!

Our first monarch release day was very hectic! Late last night, five monarchs had emerged, and had been placed on the livingroom curtain for the night. By 6:00 AM today, another seven had emerged from their chrysalides! Releasing a DOZEN monarchs and keeping up with the summer school morning rush for both Monarch Girls AND their mom was quite a feat!

It began with little brother 'Junebug' discovering the monarchs the moment he woke up, and Mom calling to the Monarch Girls to quickly get up to release the monarchs before the sunrise really got the butterflies moving from the curtain. We didn't want them flying all over the house or getting caught in lights, ceiling fans, etc!

After carefully moving the five monarchs from the curtain to the screen door, the cage containing the other seven butterflies was opened. Several of the butterflies fluttered to the screen on their own, eager to be on their own. Others were helped along until all 12 were clinging to the screen, opening and closing their wings to prepare for that flight into freedom. It was decided that each child would release butterflies from flowers rather than having them hold onto the butterflies. Three year old brothers holding on to butterflies can be a little scary for the butterflies!

Finally, three children each held a flower in one hand with a monarch perched on it, and the screen door was pushed open. A few of the monarchs on the screen door felt the sweet breeze of freedom and quickly fluttered off to enjoy the steamy late June sunshine. Others needed a little more encouragement. In a particularly entertaining move, Junebug walked out onto the front sidewalk and encouraged his monarch to take flight by shaking the flower in his hand up and down!

It was all over within about five minutes. A couple butterflies prefered to nectar from the scabiosa flowers near the front sidewalk, while others quickly took off into the neighborhood. At one point, the garbage truck pulled up for the weekly trash collection. I'm not certain they had any idea what they were witnessing, but they had to wonder how it was that these three kids were up and outside before 6:30 on a Friday morning in June, and how all three of them were holding flowers with monarchs perched on them!

Monarch Girls are happy to report that the butterfly with the wing damaged by a fellow monarch was able to take flight! Fortunately, the tear in its wing was not as serious as it first appeared to be, and our gimpy little butterfly should be able to help increase the monarch population!

Having reared only 13 monarchs last season, we are quite pleased to be able to release a dozen monarchs in one day! We anxiously await more new monarchs! With over 40 chrysalides remaining, we are bound to have some even larger release days in the next week or so! Keep reading, and stop to enjoy the butterflies!

It's a Girl!

Our first monarch has emerged - - and it's a girl! Early this morning, a pretty monarch emerged from its chrysalis and dried its wings to prepare for its first flight!

This afternoon, we had a chance to meet our new monarch up close, as we helped her perch on both a coreopsis flower and later a scabiosa flower to let her eat her first meal--delicious nectar! She was evidently not ready to eat yet, as we just couldn't convince her to nectar from either flower, but here is a photo snapped as she fluttered her wings to take flight from the coreopsis flower:

After we returned her to a cage for safe-keeping for the night, we noticed that she did sip nectar from the flowers we placed in a glass of water for her. Success! She will be released tomorrow morning to hopefully leave more eggs behind on our milkweed to start the next generation of monarchs!

Late into the evening, more and more monarchs began to emerge from their chrysalides. It soon became necessary to move some of the newly emerged monarchs to a curtain in our livingroom to make sure that everyone had enough space to twist and move to dry their wings without damaging the wings of others! One poor butterfly's wing was torn when another butterfly got too close and damaged it with its foot! We're not sure it will be able to fly, but are hopeful that it will at least get around well enough to flutter from flower to flower in the garden. Six new monarchs in less than 24 hours! Things are about to get very busy for the Monarch Girls!

From Stripes to Green!

Our first caterpillar pupated (went into the chrysalis stage) yesterday during the day! A day later, we have 11 beautiful green chrysalides! Over the past couple of weeks since we first found monarch eggs and caterpillars, we have harvested a lot of milkweed leaves and cleaned a lot of caterpillar feces out of the cages and containers in order to keep our caterpillars as well-fed and healthy as possible.

Last night was another big 'first' for us as well. We were actually able to watch two of the caterpillars shed their skin to reveal the green chrysalis underneath. It was absolutely amazing to watch the little miracle take place!

We will try to post more photos soon. Meanwhile, we anxiously await the day our new monarchs will emerge from their chrysalides! The big day should come just under two weeks from now!