Reflections on the Thirteenth Week of Summer – The Monarch Chrysalis

Monarch Chrysalis

Friday, September 13, I gave up on matching socks and focused my camera lens on the kittens sitting on clothes in the laundry basket.

Spence stepped inside the front door and grinned wide enough to connect his sideburns. “I’ve got a picture for you.”

Doubting his photo could top the cute kittens, I followed him outside.

He pointed to the railing of our porch stairs.

Not exciting. I must have made a face because he waggled his pointing finger.

“Look closer. Under the railing.”

There, between the top post and the first stile, hung a jade green chrysalis decorated with glistening gold spots. I gasped. Nature had created a royal jewel. A monarch butterfly chrysalis. The first I’d ever seen.

Spence chuckled. “I thought you’d be interested.”

To find the right angle for the camera, I trudged up and down the steps then moved porch furniture. Hugging the too-heavy-to-move wooden bear statue and resting the camera on its head proved the best spot.

After that Friday, every time I walked onto the porch or up and down the steps, I paused to check the chrysalis. As if it were really a royal jewel, it hung motionless and unchanging―on the outside.

This past Wednesday in country dark, I lugged my sewing machine, a bag with a half sewn rope bowl that I’d started at the quilt guild meeting, and a flashlight up the steps. Of course I pointed the flashlight at the chrysalis. Unchanged. But a black spider with white markings had spun a web between the stile and post just under the chrysalis. The spider, a Cross Orbweaver, sat center web. Yikes.

Milkweed July 4, 2019

Despite myriad milkweed plants growing in our fields, Spence and I had only spotted three lone monarchs during the summer. None had arrived when the milkweed bloomed, but all fluttered around milkweed plant. One of their eggs turned caterpillar must have crawled thirty feet from a milkweed plant to our porch before spinning its chrysalis.

I set my gear on the porch and glared at the spider.

If the monarch hatched and fluttered into the web, the spider would devour it. With monarchs endangered, that web had to go.

Holding the flashlight with one hand and careful to avoid touching the spider with the other, I put my index finger on the top right of the web and pulled down.

The spider scrambled to the web fragment dangling from the stile.

Not wanting the spider to rebuild the web, I brushed the second side―part way to the spider.

The web collapsed.

The spider dropped to the step, scurried over the edge, and disappeared into the dark garden.

“You’ve got plenty of other places to catch food,” I called in my teacher voice. “This monarch needs to fly to Mexico.” I cleared the sticky web remnants, picked up my gear, and hustled inside to wash my hands.

During the rest of the week, I checked the chrysalis and hunted for spider webs. Either my teacher voice or destructive finger had worked. The Cross Orbweaver didn’t return, and the chrysalis darkened.

Thursday a dark ellipse appeared inside.

Friday the whole chrysalis turned dark green but still had gold spots.

Saturday morning, when I dashed outside in my nightgown and bare feet making Spence hoot, the chrysalis looked black. I stooped and leaned in. Nose two inches from the chrysalis, I detected orange with black lines―the wing of a monarch. According to Google, the chrysalis would crack, and the monarch would emerge. Soon.

Monarch Chrysalis Ready to Hatch

Grinning so hard my cheeks ached, I ran inside and grabbed Spence’s arm. “You’ve got to see this.”

“I’m making breakfast.” He flipped hash browns with a spatula. “Can’t it wait?” He stirred oatmeal in a pan and glanced at me.

Letting go of his arm, I hugged myself and bounced on the balls of my feet.

Spence sighed. “It can’t.” He turned the burners off and followed me outside.

I pointed to the orange and black wing showing through the clear chrysalis.

“That’s nice, dear.” He returned to the kitchen and didn’t follow me every half hour when I checked the chrysalis. No movement. No cracks.

At 2:04, I opened the door wide and stood guard against any charging kitten that barreled toward the porch.

Spence, biceps bulging, carried a steaming canning kettle, filled with water and six quarts of pickles, to the porch.

Shooing Gilbert away from the door, I stepped out, walked to the steps, and gasped. “It’s hatching, Spence!”

Spence made a detour to pat me on the shoulder. “It is.”

The monarch, with a huge black abdomen dwarfing its crumpled top wing, dangled from the torn chrysalis.

I dashed inside for my camera and computer then settled on a porch step. Alternating photo taking and computer photo processing, I sat in a vigil.

Crickets chirped. Aspen leaves swished. The butterfly swayed in the breeze.

While the kittens and Spence napped inside, the monarch’s top wings unfolded to full size. Then the tips of the bottom wings emerged.

A red-tailed hawk  shrieked. Kee-eeeeeeerarr. Wild turkeys clucked in the valley. The monarch’s bottom wing extended, and the breeze brought a whiff of tannin from maple leaves turning orange-brown.

Sunshine roasted the top of my head, and the plastic tread on the wood step felt like rocks against my bony butt. I grabbed a pillow from the porch love seat and my sunhat from a hook by the door, then resettled.

The monarch opened and closed its wings a half inch. Red liquid, the butterfly’s blood, dripped from the drying wings.

Monarch Left Chrysalis

Spence, awake and having left the house by the ramp rather than disturb my step vigil, waved from his rumbling tractor at the garage. “You look like a wood nymph!”

Wood nymphs sit with computers on their laps and cameras around their necks? He probably only saw the floppy, hat.

At 3:38, as if the monarch wanted to get out of the direct sun, it wobble-crawled from the chrysalis to the other side of the railing.

I jumped up and leaned over the railing for more photos.

As if doing yoga meditation, the butterfly moved its wings flat against the railing then closed them. Ohhhhhhhh-pen. Clohhhhhhhh-se. Ressssssssst.

Way past hip and back complaining-time, the monarch crawl-fluttered to the top of the railing before wobble-winging to my cushion.

Sheesh. With stabs in my hips and pressure on my lower back, I could use that cushiony seat. I held a finger out to the monarch.

Its feelers twitched, its head swiveled, and its feet climbed onto the finger. They tickled.

I sat on the cushion and angled the camera for finger-butterfly selfies.

After ten minutes, the butterfly crawled off my finger, across my palm, and up my forearm. It’s feet pricked making me wonder if its feet had tiny spikes for clinging to surfaces.

Setting the butterfly on the cushion beside me, I returned to sorting photos. The butterfly crawled up my arm and rested on my cap sleeve. It waved its wings.

Wind chimes clanged. A breeze brought the fragrance of fresh cut grass Spence had mowed.

The monarch crept toward my neck.

I flinched.

The monarch flapped, fell to the pillow, flapped, and crawled to the middle of the porch.

There the butterfly repeated the winged-yoga moves. Ohhhhhhhh-pen. Clohhhhhhhh-se. Ressssssssst.

At 4:40, an hour after leaving the chrysalis and as cute as kittens sitting in a laundry basket, the monarch flapflapflapped its wings and flew off the porch heading south.

Next stop Mexico.

Finger Selfie with Monarch