The Plight of a Butterfly Rancher

Today is my mom’s birthday. Happy birthday momma!!! She’s now really getting up their in years, but I’m so glad that she’s still around.

Of a completely different vein, I came across a couple of poignant quotations about butterflies. The late George Carlin, noted for his comic outlook on life, commented, “The caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity.”

Another more poetic musing comes from the pen of Ponce Denis Écouchard Lebrun who observed, “The butterfly is a flying flower,The flower a tethered butterfly.” And finally, I think this observation by Richard Bach is quite telling, “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls a butterfly.”

In the small patio space that comprises the entirety of my allotted backyard I’ve set out to raise butterflies to delight myself and maybe the whole neighborhood. I didn’t enter into this process lightly having studiously researched what plants caterpillars and butterflies most preferred. I then went to extreme ends to attain a proper mixture of nature’s munchies for my desired menagerie.

My first purchase, last autumn, was a sturdy looking Mexican milkweed (Asclepias curassavica). After weathering an embarrassingly mild Southeast Texas winter, by early this month, my milkweed was gloriously adorned with a plentitude of sparkling flowers and six stalks. Two of these exceeded three feet tall and were exceptionally sturdy.

However, over the last couple of weeks things began changing rapidly. To start, I first noticed several of the leaves of the milkweed had been the source of nourishment for something. Then, upon closer examination, I spotted a good many little yellow fiends having attached themselves to the flower stems. In post-haste I rushed to the internet to find out what was going on with my prize milkweed. I had aphids! Whereupon I learned that not much can be done to eradicate these repugnant rascals short of concocting any variety of potions intended to bring about a horrendous, and seemingly painful, demise. Admittedly, they certainly were an ugly adornment to the garden but anything that would poison aphids turns out to also be detrimental to the health and well-being of a baby caterpillar I noticed was among them. Incidentally, it seems he was the source of the newly discovered leaf deterioration.

Settling on drowning the aphids as being the most humane means for eliminating them I took a glass of water and some Q-tips and began a tedious task of trying to swab all of them away. They were then dunked into the drink until they stopped moving. (Note: I took no particular pleasure in this process – however, it seemed a necessary evil that had to be perpetrated.)

As I would never be accused of having anything that reflects a patient persona, upon several unsatisfying attempts at assuaging aphids, I again found – on the internet – that ladybugs feast on aphids. Okay, this could be good. I’d certainly be inclined toward letting them do the dirty work. And after all, it did seem to be an all natural solution. Except, a diligent examination of my garden indicated that it did not possess a single ladybug amid its make up. In the meantime I now have a growing count of caterpillars nearing double digits.

Alas, I learned that any butterfly rancher can actually purchase live ladybugs from your local plant nursery (the same place I’d gotten the milkweed to begin with. Indeed me thinks I begin to see a pattern developing here.) But anyway I hurried on over there and bought an exceedingly plentiful supply of aphid devouring ladybugs. (Further note: The smallest pack of ladybugs available for purchase was 1,500 – talk about overkill! What a racket.)

I dutifully released the ladybugs and they indeed quickly made all the aphids disappear. I would have expected nothing less given the insurmountable onslaught the aphids were up against. Certainly, by numerical proportion, they were outnumbered no less than two to one.

Within mere hours it seems, my caterpillars increase in number to over a dozen as the ladybugs dwindle to well below half of the original herd. (Talk about seeing money just flying away!) But, I’m now noticing that all of these caterpillars are really getting quite large as nary a solitary leaf of the milkweed is found to be un-muched-upon.

Within the next few days I have less than a dozen ladybugs left and the caterpillar count has risen to twenty! The milkweed now seems to have more of them hanging on it than it does leaves!

And then the inevitable happened. The caterpillars ate every last one of the leaves down to the bare bark, flowers included, and proceeded to begin chomping away at what remained of the original six stalks. So now I’m thinking their voracious appetites probably would have handled the aphids without me having to purchase a gazillion ladybugs…se la vie.

Sadly though, every one of my carefully nurtured caterpillars, have now left. They just crawled away under the cloak of darkness without so much as a single solitary thank you note left behind. (And don’t think they didn’t have enough legs to do this!) Wait. I’ll take that back, look, there is one little fellow who is still attempting to suck the very lifeblood out of one milkweed stalk, but the other nineteen are nowhere to be found.

Somehow, this just doesn’t seem quite fair or right and nowhere close to being justified. Not to mention it’s a far cry from the fulfillment of my dreams to be watching twenty monarch butterflies frolicking about my little garden this summer. Yes, that would have been me sitting in one of my patio chairs, sipping my morning, (afternoon or evening) coffee watching the butterflies imbibing on the nectar from the variety of other flowers I’ve provided for their sustenance. Indeed many a wonderful moment was to have been spent in communion with all my little butterfly friends.

But no, they just ate all of the milkweed plant and are now gone. Brushing aside an embarrassing tear, invariably I suppose, I can still hope that maybe one or two of them might stop back by after their metamorphoses for a visit sometime. And maybe the milkweed will even be able to recover so that some new baby caterpillar eggs can be laid by other monarch butterflies. Drat, I’m just going to have to wait and see at this point.

Now I won’t beleaguer an already plentiful prose by pointing to some rather obvious parallels that pertain to the world around us. I do expect you can garner a few of your own perspectives about the cycle of life from my observational encounter with this thankless bunch of caterpillars.

I’m not the least bit ashamed to admit that I had actually come to love these little buggers (although they didn’t stick around long enough for me to actually name any of them) although I do know my dreams and desires were for nothing but good things to be enjoyed by all of them. (Wow, there’s a whole sermon on God’s love just screaming out from this…but I’ll forego the temptation to traipse down that trail.)

Nevertheless, if you do happen to see one of my caterpillars that will soon have turned into a monarch butterfly flitting about your neighborhood this summer…would you do me the kindness of giving them my best?

Ever yours regardlessly,

mike