Mother Monarch’s Story

By Madeline Champagne

This probably will never happen, but just imagine, if you can, that a female Monarch butterfly could remember where she laid an egg on a particular milkweed plant, and she came back twice to visit her caterpillar, when it had just come out of the egg, and when it was ready to make the chrysalis.

Here’s what she might say on her first visit:

Well, hello, Dear Little One! I see that you have eaten your way out of your egg, and now you’re eating that eggshell, which is important nutrition for you. The next thing you’ll be doing is eating some fibers of the leaf that you’re on, then you’ll be eating that leaf. I searched very carefully to find the right plant, which is milkweed, to lay an egg on, and to lay my egg on a nice tender leaf to get you off to a good start.

I’m going to tell you some things about your life as a caterpillar. Not many caterpillars are told ahead of time what is going to happen. I don’t have to teach you what to do – all your behaviors and actions that you do to insure your survival, you know how to do by instinct. Which means that you just know what to do, no one has to teach you. But since you are my special caterpillar, I thought you might like to know what your future will be like.

You’ll be hungry, and you’ll eat a lot. You’ll grow to about 2,700 times your original mass. A few times your skin will feel too tight, so you’ll find a safe place to stay in, maybe staying on your plant and maybe moving off of it, and you’ll make some of that silk to help you hold on to whatever surface you’re on. Then you’ll push with your muscles in the back of your neck, which will split your skin and there will already be a bigger new skin underneath. New body parts, like breathing tubes and head capsule, have been developing, so you’ll be replacing your skin but also some other body parts. This is hard work, so you will likely have to rest for a while afterwards. If you’re not disturbed, you’ll probably turn around and eat your old skin.

Your life is simple, but there are dangers. There’s a lot of bigger creatures out there, who may not be very careful about the plant that you’re on. There are insects that like to eat caterpillars, and there are insects that lay their eggs in caterpillars. There isn’t much you can do about the other insects. One thing that is very fortunate for you is that you will probably be very safe from birds, who like to eat caterpillars. You see, when you eat milkweed, you are eating some chemicals that make you taste bad to birds, so they learn to leave you alone.

When you sense danger, you’ll probably try to move out of the way. When you’re little, you might fall off the leaf but you’ll be able to stay on the plant since you’ll be hanging by a piece of that silk that you make. When you are bigger, you’ll curl up in a ball and fall off the leaf into the grass and leaves – but you’ll easily find your way back onto the plant.

I’ll come back and check on you in about two weeks, that is when you will be a full-grown caterpillar.

Two weeks later:

Well, hello, Dear Big One! My, how you have grown. I’m glad to see that you had a good life as a caterpillar. Now you’re going to make a big change, so that you can turn into a special butterfly like me. You’re going to have to do some work to get ready, and I’ll tell you what you’ll be doing – but don’t worry, as I told you before, if you don’t remember everything I tell you now, it will come to you through the process.

First, you’re not hungry anymore, so you’ve stopped eating. Now you’ll need to climb to a nice safe place – it might be on the underside of a leaf that you’re on, or you could walk off the plant and look for a sheltered place. If you stay on the underside of a leaf, you’ll want to stay along the main vein of the leaf, that is the strongest part. It is important to find a place that is up from the ground. After you’ve climbed up to your safe place, you’ll use your silk to make a little mat, and make a little silk button in the middle of it. Once that is done, you can rest for a while, holding on to that mat of silk. The next step is to walk a little bit and when your very back two legs are at that button, make sure you are holding on to that button with the two legs at your tail end, and when you are sure that you are holding on tight, let go with your front legs so that you end up hanging with your head end down. Now you can relax for a day or so. The next step will be to shed your skin for the last time – but this time instead of a new skin under the old skin, as your skin splits from behind your head, there will now be a shell.

Here’s the last two things that you’ll do as a caterpillar. While you’re hanging upside-down there, you’ll shed your skin for the last time. Remember how you push the muscles at the back of your neck to split your skin. As it splits off now, instead of a new skin there is a shell that will form over your body. Here’s the very tricky part: as you were growing as a caterpillar, there was a little black stalk developing at your tail end. At the far end of the stalk are lots of little hooks. As that shell, called a chrysalis, is forming, you need to push that stalk up so that the hooks catch on to that thick button of silk that you were holding onto with your back legs. You’ll have to squirm around to make sure that the hooks catch on. When your chrysalis shell is forming, it is soft at first – which is why you need to be hanging off the ground – and then the shell will harden. This is the last thing you’ll be doing as a caterpillar.

Then a wonderful thing will happen. Safe inside that chrysalis shell are cells that have been with you all along, and they will form and develop into something that is not at all like a caterpillar – can you imagine!  When all that development is done, you’ll look just like me – with eyes, antennae, 6 legs, a body, and wings that are not only beautiful with a bright orange color and black lines where the veins are, but they are strong and will carry you far and wide. And you won’t be eating leaves, you’ll be drinking nectar from beautiful flowers.

I am glad to see that you have grown up so big and so healthy. It is exciting to think about how you started as a little egg. In that eggs were cells that would develop into all the physical parts of the caterpillar, chrysalis, and butterfly stages. Also in that egg was everything you needed to know to survive.

I’m not going to tell you what it is like to be a butterfly, but you’ll know what to do, just as you would have known what to do as a caterpillar if I didn’t tell you. I probably won’t be here when you become a butterfly, but you’ll know how to find other Monarch butterflies to be with.

We Monarch butterflies have been on this earth for thousands of years, so you have ancestors for many, many generations back. As a butterfly you’ll find another Monarch to mate with and you will be making sure that there are Monarch butterflies for many generations to come.