Love Is Like A Monarch Butterfly

I have a kitchen full of butterflies at the moment. The monarch grubs that I raised on pumpkin after they decimated my three large swan plants have all morphed into chrysalis, some more successfully than others (the casualties shrivel up after the first couple of days). Over the past week these have begun to hatch out into beautiful gaudy monarchs, tame enough that I can let them crawl onto my fingers.


Someone told me last week that the DNA of the caterpillar is completely different to the DNA of the butterfly that emerges from the chrysalis making the whole process even more surreal. I have watched as these greedy little grubs in their colourful striped footie jerseys ate themselves into a stupor before heading northwards to sit in a trance for a couple of days before they shot silk out of their backside, hung in a half hearted J and shed their skins, turning into a hard green shell decorated with golden dots. For a couple of weeks they remained like that before a touch of black at the top of the chrysalis announced something amazing was going on inside. Within a couple of days the whole thing would turn black and orange and suddenly a butterfly would emerge so quickly that it was hard to catch them in the act.


Their wings all crumpled at first they hang from their broken home with a huge body that gradually shrinks as fluid is pumped into their wings making them unfurl in glorious technicolour. At this point I usually leave them a few hours before popping them onto a plant in the sun to dry out a bit further before they take off into the sky and flutter off into the distance. So far I have watched this happen 16 times and each time it seems just as incredible.