Here is your orange things in nature fact of the day. I am amazed by monarch butterflies! I have raised them for over twenty years and still get as giddy as a child over seeing them form a chrysalis and later hatch from it as I did the first time I saw it happen. The caterpillars start out so tiny that my son called them "germs!" They are the size of this exclamation point without the dot! In two weeks, they are the size of a child's pinky finger! If humans grew that fast, a baby would be born normal sized and be the size of a baby WHALE in two weeks! If their metamorphosis isn't amazing enough, their migration REALLY blows my mind! The monarchs where I live in Ohio travelled all the way to Mexico for the winter this past fall They had never been there before and they will never return there. They should be moving north into Texas by now. They will hopefully mate and lay eggs before they die. Those eggs will hatch into caterpillars who somehow know "I'm going NORTH!" They will live a couple of weeks and hopefully lay eggs on the way. Repeat. By late May/early June, I might get to see them in Ohio doing the same thing, heading north as they lay eggs. There are SEVERAL generations between the monarchs that left Mexico in April and the ones that will return in the fall. I tag them every year with stickers from Monarch Watch. The stickers do not harm them and help researchers learn more about their migration. It's like winning the butterfly lottery when someone in Mexico finds a butterfly that I held in my hands!! WOW! I really rambled on this post! Can you tell I love monarchs? 🦋 #orange #butterflies #insects #natureclub #migration #monarchbutterflies

Posted by Mel Grosvenor at 2021-04-24 10:10:10 UTC