One of my favorite things about living on a farm is that every couple of weeks something miraculous happens. First, it's the Bobolinks coming back to our hay field from Argentina. Then the Alewives (a migratory fish) return to the creeks in numbers that would blow your mind. It's really like something you would imagine only happening in Alaska! Then the Osprey (birds of prey that eat fish) come back; it’s not a coincidence how those two last things happen together. Right now something just as amazing, but less noticeable is going on…the metamorphosis of the Monarch butterfly.
We have several spots where milkweed likes to grow on our farm. While there are many species of milkweed, most of the plants around here are 2 - 3 feet tall and have large, oval leaves. If you break a leaf off, a white, milky sap flows out which is mildly poisonous to most animals. This doesn't make them dangerous to us for a couple of reasons:
- Nobody wants to eat milkweed. It tastes terrible. The white sap is as bitter as bitter gets.
- It’s not actually deadly poisonous. It appears to just give animals a temporary upset stomach.
It turns out that this is exactly why Monarch larvae formed the relationship they have with milkweed! Monarch larvae or pupa start out life as an egg about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. After 4 days of relaxing on the underside of a milkweed leaf, the egg hatches, and a very, very small monarch caterpillar climbs out. It's about the size of a comma on a page. So, the caterpillars' whole focus in life at this point is to chow down on milkweed leaves and stems. They digest the sap and plant matter and what's more, they are able to accumulate the mild poison in the sap into their tissues! (This is very helpful later in life.) After several days of grazing like a tiny little sheep, the Monarch knows that something is happening. Nobody ever explained anything to it. It simply can feel it and it knows what to do. It anchors to the underside of the milkweed leaf and hangs from it, and quicker than you'd think, it sheds its exoskeleton almost like a kid just unzipped a sleeping bag and climbed out. There it hangs for about 4 days, changing bit by bit. This is the part that is the most miraculous to me. To really take it in, just try to imagine a roly, poly caterpillar, looking something like a yellow and black striped Jabba the Hut emerging from its own "coffin", as one of the most stunningly beautiful and graceful creatures - the Monarch butterfly. HOW??? I don't actually know how, but if you don't think that's #knockyoursocksoffamazing then you should go sit under a tree watching water striders do whatever it is they are doing on a creek until your equilibrium returns.
At this point in its lifecycle, the Monarch has 6 legs, 4 wings, and a very long tongue that it uses to drink the nectar of flowers. During its time as a butterfly, the Monarch flits about from flower to flower, largely defenseless and unable to outfly birds that may want to eat it. This is where all that accumulated milkweed sap plays a big role. It turns out that birds are pretty smart. Just like us, they remember what they ate and how it made them feel. When they eat a Monarch and it tastes HORRIBLE and then they feel ill, they take note. Since birds also see in color, the next time they see a very distinct orange and black Monarch flying around, and feel tempted to go eat it, some little voice in the back of their head pulls the reins and says, “Whoa! You don't want to taste that terrible thing and feel sick again, do you?” The wise bird then lets the Monarch go about its nectar-drinking business, unbothered.
Here we find a window into one definition of ecology: Everything has a story and that story is viscerally useful to you. Are you the Alewife swimming upstream against the resistance of fast-moving water? Are you the Bobolinks coming back to a familiar home after a winter away? Are you the Osprey building a sturdy nest, full of abundance? Or are you the Monarch changing from a caterpillar into the next amazing butterfly? It's a trick question. You have experienced all of this, and will again. These are the surprising gifts from nature that farmers who practice regenerative agriculture help to thrive.