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| OHCC LIVING | APRIL 2022 | 17 Save The Monarch Butterfly Teach The Grand (and Great-Grand) Children By Myra Esler Spring is coming! Milkweed is growing! Butterflies will arrive soon. While we are waiting for further construction of the Sanctuary Site, we hope this story will help set the scene for excitement to come. Hi! I'm Monty the Monarch. I'm pretty tiny and I fly very fast, so you may not know me yet, but I am one of your very best friends. I live in your garden so that I can raise my babies in a very warm and cozy place. I want to get to know you, because you can help me find the right food I need for my family. If you do, I will put on an amazing show for you – and I'll even help make sure you have lots of fruit and vegetables to eat, and pretty flowers in your garden. How's that for a deal? When my wife and I meet in the spring, we lay itsy bitsy eggs on the leaves of a plant called milkweed. We're very fussy eaters – it's milkweed or nothing! Milkweed has beautiful flowers that we like to eat – just like an ice cream cone for you. Some of us say it tastes like chicken! It takes about two weeks for our eggs to hatch, and when they do, you will meet a beautiful yellow worm with black and white stripes. That is what my babies look like. I know, some kids don't like worms, but MY kids are special, and you should NEVER harm them. They even have a special name: Caterpillar. We call them "Cat" for short. Cat has a very important job to do – eat all the leaves off of the milkweed plant so Cat can grow really fast. Just imagine a kid eating hot dogs all day, for two weeks! It's a big job, but Cat has to do it – otherwise, there would be no more Monarchs. Chomping down all those leaves doesn't hurt the plant, because it's strong and will soon grow more. When Cat is as full as it can get, it runs (we call it running, but it may look like wriggling to you) around your garden to find a perfect place to spin a beautiful green bell, using all that food it ate. Cat has a hidden talent – it can spin a fine silk thread to attach to a tree branch, or a piece of wood, or some other handy thing. The bell that Cat makes is called a chrysalis; it's beautiful green, with a gold belt around it. The gold belt tells you it's one of us Monarchs. By the way, never touch the bell or you will mess up the plan; we need our beauty sleep! Then Cat goes to sleep for a couple of weeks in its chrysalis cocoon – kind of like bears do in the winter. That's when the magic happens. While Cat sleeps, it uses all that stored-up food to turn into a beautiful design of orange and black. When Cat wakes up – wait, he's gone! Disappeared! But in his place, something much, much prettier flies out of that chrysalis bell – me, Monty, a Monarch Butterfly! If you'd like a copy of this story, contact Myra Esler at mke6717@ gmail.com. Egg Caterpillar Chrysalis Adult emerges Adult The host plant is Milkweed (Asclepia)

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