This summer I incubated insect eggs, larvae and pupae in my kitchen.

Dozens of them. On purpose.

Every morning, I checked to see who had hatched, eaten, pupated and pooped. I shared photos of fat yellow-and-black caterpillars on social media, and I told stories about them to anyone who showed even the smallest bit of interest. I’ve been doing it for about three years, and I’ve infested other people’s homes, too.

My pets all became monarch butterflies, once common insects that ranged across southern Canada but which are now on the country’s list of endangered species. In Canada, the US and Mexico, their populations are down by 90 percent from 20 years ago (almost 15 percent in the last year), a shocking drop for a creature that has existed for tens of thousands of years – but also, a serious depletion of a pollinator that contributes directly to human food production.

Manifest milkweed

When my kids were small, their school would sometimes buy monarch pupae – “chrysalises” – from special breeders. I listened jealously to stories of seeing butterflies emerge, and then it clicked for me – the “special breeder” thing was kind of crazy. We live where monarchs are supposed to live. So we planted milkweed in our yard and kept our fingers crossed. It took a year, but my eight-year-old found an egg one morning. Together, he and I collected the leaf, and that egg became our very first hand-raised butterfly – “Stripey”.

Now if you’re a gardener, you may have spent years trying to get rid of milkweed. Over time, though, you might notice more people encouraging it among their flowers. That’s because:

  1. It’s the only thing that monarch caterpillars eat.
  2. Monarchs are “pollinators” which means they help your plants (not just milkweed) fertilize each other.
  3. Monarchs are the tip of the iceberg of native pollinators that are being threatened, and without pollinators, human food sources could disappear.

Girl with butterfly on her glasses
Infesting in my friends

There are now more people raising monarchs and incorporating native plants into their gardens, and I’m happy that my family’s efforts have contributed to the lepidopteran love-in. My son traded two caterpillars for a toy at a community garage sale, and a week later, the new family of “Fred and George” asked if we could babysit “the twins” for a couple of days. But when they brought them over, they brought eight additional caterpillars and eggs they’d adopted after a walk in a neighbourhood park.

And one day at my daughter’s soccer practice, my habit of poking through field-side milkweed caught the attention of another parent. When I told him I was looking for monarch eggs, he called his wife and daughter over and the three of them asked how they could raise butterflies, too. And the next day, they went out and found a dozen eggs of their own.

Re-organ-ize yourself

So, okay, they’re endangered and they’re important to agriculture. But honestly, what’s the attraction?

For starters, monarchs morph from an egg through three other distinct physical forms, hatching into two-millimetre-long caterpillars that grow to six centimetres in just two weeks. They then shed their caterpillar skins, rearrange all their internal organs and transition into stunning jade chrysalises with metallic gold highlights. Two weeks after that, they emerge as delicate orange-and-black butterflies.

But that’s not all – their multigenerational travel cycle is amazing, too. Several generations are born over a summer, and each can live up to a month. However, monarchs born in September and early October can live up to nine months, flying 3,000 km south to overwinter in the specific stands of fir trees in mountains northwest of Mexico City. In the early spring, those same butterflies will fly to Texas and Oklahoma and lay eggs that will become the butterflies that will finish the trip north and begin the summer cycle again. And those spring monarchs’ great-great grandchildren will fly back to Mexico just four months later.

My pollinator peeps

You might be seeing lots of monarchs if you live in a neighbourhood where people are planting milkweed, echinacea, black-eyed Susans, butterfly bush, bee balm and other native flowers. But populations across Canada are still low (though improving), and in the wild, only one in a hundred will make it to adulthood. By raising those eggs inside and away from predators, my fellow “butterfly farmers” and I are significantly increasing the chances that the butterflies will be able to reproduce and repopulate.

Some of us have also become active in the Butterflyway Project of the David Suzuki Foundation, putting native plants in public spaces in city neighbourhoods. For me, it’s been great to connect with other monarch fans, and a really satisfying way to learn more about native gardening. Personally, adding milkweeds and other native plants to my garden significantly improved my (non-native) tomato harvest because – guess what?! – I have more pollinators now. These include monarchs, swallowtails, bees and hummingbirds, and they fill my tiny Toronto yard with colour and life.

I love watching all the changes and then releasing each butterfly. But it’s also rewarding – more butterflies mean more beauty, and more food. And that’s good for everyone.

Heather Finley is a Toronto marketing writer, monarch-lover and volunteer Butterflyway Ranger.

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