Our Boondocker Welcome host was so much fun to visit with, and we really enjoyed getting to know Ramelle! She has one of the most interesting hobbies, and she has taught us so much about raising Monarch butterflies since we arrived to Door County, Wisconsin. One room of her home was filled with the net enclosures where she watches the miraculous process unfold.
It starts with a white egg that is only the size of a pinhead. Ramelle doesn't go out looking for the eggs. But they seem to find her. When she is gathering fresh milk weed for her caterpillars to eat, she might unknowingly bring in an egg. When that happens, she sets that plant aside, and waits to see if it will hatch in 3-5 days.
When it hatches, it is so tiny that a camera can hardly focus on it. That new little caterpillar is very hungry, and Ramelle has to be sure that it has a good plant source to eat. So she goes out gathering milkweed . . . it might have new eggs on it . . . and the cycle continues.
We watched her caterpillars as they devoured the plants she brought in for them. Because of pesticides and other bugs, she carefully cleans each of the plants she brings in from her yard.
The caterpillar/larva stage lasts 9-14 days. During this time, it will outgrow its skin five times. Each of those growth stages between molts is called an instar. Ramelle pointed out that this one just molted out of its skin because its antenna were still bent from the process.
During this hungry caterpillar stage, there is lots of--ahem--excrement. It's a full-time job cleaning up after these pooping machine.
When the caterpillar grows to be about two inches long, the larvae will crawl up to the top of the enclosure, or onto the highest leaf, and form a "J." It spins a very tough fiber that attaches its back end securely. This fiber has to withstand the wind and the rain outdoors. Here inside the butterfly nursery, its chances of success are so much higher.
We had never seen the process of a chrysalis forming, or really thought about how it happened. Do they spin that smooth green cocoon out of silk? First of all, it's not a cocoon, even though the children's book "The Hungry Caterpillar" uses that term. It's a chrysalis. Ramelle schooled us on the correct butterfly terminology. That J-Shaped caterpillar will begin writhing until its striped skin breaks open. What is underneath is that mint green color. The caterpillar keeps wiggling until the striped skin is bunched up into a little dry wad that will fall off the top. At this first stage, the chrysalis is still bumpy.
As it dries, it becomes smooth and the gold dots emerge. What a beautiful jewel it becomes! This is a miracle to watch.
It will hang completely still for 10-14 days during this process of metamorphosis. It's a miracle that something so still can be undergoing such dramatic change. When the green color darkens, Ramelle knows it's almost ripe. At the very final stage, we could see through the chrysalis to see the color of the wings inside.
Those beautiful wings were still folded up as the butterfly emerged upside down. It seems like its abdomen is very big when it first emerges.
We were completely enthralled with the whole process, but Ramelle has seen it hundreds of times. She was pleased that we were enjoying it so much. She had the smile of a proud new parent while we watched this miracle literally unfold.
The butterfly hung upside down, latching onto the chrysalis shell as it swung back and forth to unfold those rumpled wings. It was also pumping fluid from its swollen abdomen into its wings.
The monarchs in Wisconsin live for about one month. During that time they will lay eggs on the milkweed plants and then die. This generation that was hatching in July will do the same.
It doesn't take long before those rumpled wings straighten into beautifully formed flat wings. They will begin flapping them open to continue to dry and harden them.
After building up their strength and getting completely dry, it was time to coax them gently onto your hand. We unzipped the net enclosure, and escorted them into the garden. Coming out of the chrysalis early this morning, this girl flew as soon as Denisa opened her hand.
Her brother didn't emerge from the chrysalis until afternoon, and he was content to ride on Mark's hand for a tour around the garden. This generation will produce the eggs that will become the migrating butterflies.
We learned how to tell the difference between the male and female monarchs. We know this was a male because of the dark dots on the veins in the bottom wings. The female will not have those dots, and her black veins will be thicker and more pronounced.
Ramelle called us one evening to let us know that the 60 Minutes television show was airing their monarch butterfly segment. It was great timing to increase our butterfly education. It showed the map of where the migrating monarchs spend the summer in the northern parts of North America. That's where the generations will live for a month at a time until they produce the magical migratory generation. That generation will not produce the reproduction organs until later. Instead, the migrators will know when to start the 2,500-mile flight south to a safe place to spend the winter. While the preceding generations live and die in less than a month, this migrating generation will live about eight months.
That safe winter place is in a shrinking forest in Mexico. Now protected as a natural reserve, millions of monarchs somehow know the path to get there. None of these butterflies have ever been here before, yet they know where to go. That's another miracle! The 60 Minutes program showed the forest with trees and ground covered with millions of butterflies that stay alive for that long journey, plus all of the winter months. Then they know when and how to start the journey back to where they were hatched in the north. While one butterfly makes the 2,500-mile journey south in the fall, it will take several generations to make the trip back north in the spring. How those new butterflies know where they are going is yet another miracle!
Spending time with Ramelle and her butterflies gave us a front row seat to more of God's wonders. How a little white egg can turn into a caterpillar that can turn into a butterfly that can fly its way across a continent on those delicate wings--that's a whole set of miracles that remind us we are wandering among God's tiny wonders!
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