Back in September, in a blog dated the 17th, I mentioned fnding a Monarch butterfly caterpillar while driving up the main lane of our grazing system. Karen had fixed a two liter pop bottle, as usual, to house the caterpillar until it transformed into a butterfly. She faithfully changes the milkweed everyday until the caterpillar hangs to spin its chrysallis. We were following the same routine with this caterpillar, when things changed one morning.

Karen had gone to change the milkweed when she found that the caterpillar had escaped. We searched the area where the bottle was sitting with no luck. We resigned ourselves to the fact that the caterpillar would probably eventually die without milkweed to feed on, and we sort of forgot about it. Imagine Karen and the boys surprise this morning, as they were getting ready for school, to find a Monarch butterfly clinging to the big patio door at the north end of the kitchen. Obviously, the caterpillar had been further along in its development than we had thought and had been mature enough to finish the metamorphosis into a butterfly.

When I came up to the house to see the boys before they boarded the school bus, Noah met me at the door with the Monarch on the back of his hand. I was excited to find out our guest had survived and was now ready to take flight. Monarchs were very rare this fall which made the success of this one's maturing even more special. As soon as Noah stepped out the door, the butterfly took to the air and fluttered off over the pasture. The first wing beats on its way to Mexico.