We ate a lot of Prego that summer as I saved jars from our
recycling bin and when that wasn’t enough, I encouraged neighbors and family to
quickly consume their extra Concord grape Smuckers and chunky Pace salsa, poked
holes in the lids and deposited caterpillars inside.
We never tired of watching the monarch caterpillars, hanging
in a “J” from the underside of the lid, transform into a chrysalis. Seven-10
days later when the chrysalis darkened and a crumpled butterfly emerged, my son
would let their fragile wings dry while hanging from his sock on his
nine-year-old foot, resting on a finger while he read a book or sitting on his
arm while eating his morning bowl of Cookie Crisp.
There was always something joyful that bubbled forth within
me when my sons eagerly soaked up an experience and joined me, or was it me
joining them, in learning. We bought butterfly books and learned about host
plants and nectar plants and the names of every butterfly that frequented our
area. To this day my oldest son seems to have an uncanny knowledge of
butterflies.
My boys are adults now but this summer, our first at our
house in the woods, I planted milkweed and butterfly plant. By late July I was
finding monarch caterpillars and eggs and I carefully pulled each leaf from the
plant and brought them inside to watch them grow and change and emerge as
something new.
While my husband and boys were building our new deck, my
oldest, the one who still has not lost his love of butterflies, noticed a swallowtail
laying eggs on my parsley and dill plants that I put into the earth close to
our house early in the summer to hopefully attract the swallowtails. He
carefully located the eggs – 12 in all- and brought them in to me. Later we
found four more caterpillars already growing on the dill.
We carefully laid the eggs, upon the plant, into a container and
waited. After about five days we had 12 tiny caterpillars no bigger than a
hangnail. To keep track of them I had to use a magnifying glass.
We had only raised a few swallowtails before so mostly the
experience was new to me. They seemed to grow painfully slow and I struggled
for ways to keep track of so many tiny caterpillars. For a part of their lives
I put dill and parsley in a vase and set it into a large, clean garbage can and
let them crawl around wherever they liked on fresh plants. Eventually they all
had their own jar with holes poked in the tops in various shapes artistically
created by my husband.
As August lengthened I began to wonder if they would have
time to emerge from their chrysalis before colder days set in.
I began to research the swallowtail and learned that
oftentimes they enter what is called “diapause.” Here is how Wikipedia
describes this:
“Diapause, when referencing animal dormancy, is the delay in
development in response to regularly and recurring periods of adverse environmental
conditions. Diapause is a mechanism used as a means to survive predictable,
unfavorable environmental conditions, such as temperature extremes, drought or
reduced food availability.”
Hmmmm……what a wonderful thought to contemplate. What if, as
humans, we could enter diapause for a season? This stormy winter, all cold and
frosty, windblown and uncertain, oblivious of its’ end. When spring comes with
early sunrise and warming noonday and a slowly setting sun at the close of a
day, then I arise, a human being again.
Extremes of pain like illness and death, the loss of friends
and growing sons that leave the nest. I think these certainly count as “unfavorable
environmental conditions.” My means to survive an extreme drought would be to
crawl into bed, cocooned around my Company Store blanket and artificial down
pillow in queen -sized bed.
This summer, taking care of my caterpillars has been an
unexpected calm in the midst of what, at times, seemed like a lot of unknowns.
Waking up in the morning I knew I would find hungry caterpillars waiting for
parsley or dill or milkweed planted outside my front door. I knew their jars
would need cleaning and that I would be checking them again at 10 and noon and
3 and 6 and again before bed, when I would once again, clean their jars. In two
to three weeks they would stop eating and spin their silky string and enclose
themselves all snug and close inside a chrysalis to decide to come out, or not.
There is differing advice about what I should do with my
swallowtails that have entered diapause. Some people put them in their fridge,
taking them out when spring arrives. Some people put them on a front porch where
they withstand the environment in which they were born as caterpillars. And
some people put them in an unheated garage, protected from raging wind and icy rain
and blowing snow. It seems no matter what the choice, everyone has success with
some method.
Pause or take a longer diapause. It seems either choice
involves a pattern, an extreme and then again bursting forth from enclosed
shell to engage in a comforting pattern of living life.
