bad butterfly juju

Monday morning dawned with great promise -- our little Monarch chrysalises had "turned to windows" and we could see the soon-to-emerge butterflies clearly through the walls. We checked in on them several times an hour and put off all afternoon plans so that we could be at home to watch the miracle happen.







The first butterfly started to put in it's appearance just before noon. We rushed to watch. "This is SOOOO COOOOOOL!" exclaims Zoo Boy in this photo as he watches the butterfly push it's first legs free of the "tiny prison".




I've heard that this is an amazingly fast process, but it seemed to be taking our butterfly quite awhile to come out. But out he came (and yes, turns out it was a male -- you can tell by the vein structure of the wings and by a black dot on the hind wing, which I never did get a good photo of).







Initially, he did everything a newly hatched butterfly was supposed to do -- he hung upside down from his chrysalis, slowly unfurling his wings. J watched the process closely. We all did. But at some point in the process, he stalled. He seemed to just give up and rest.


This is about as good as he ever looked. From here, he should have pumped fluid from his abdomen into his wings to straighten them out so that they could harden and eventually dry out. But when he still looked like this several hours after his emergence, we realized that something was terribly wrong. As we began searching for answers on the internet, our other butterfly emerged all at once, while we weren't even looking. It was quickly evident that its wings were not going to unfurl at all. It lived slightly longer than the first, which died during the early evening hours, but it too was dead by this morning, which was probably a blessing given that it obviously could not fly. I had planned to feed and nurse it if it had a will to live, but it would have been a short, sad life for a creature that should have been daintily winging it's way to the mountains of Mexico.

It actually didn't take us long to figure out the problem. It seems there is a protozoan called OE that affects Monarchs, particularly those reared in captivity in large numbers. Most butterflies can be infected with the protozoan and still live, seemingly unaffected and yet spreading the infection from one butterfly to the next, infecting the next generation as they go. But sometimes the infection is so severe that the butterflies have difficulty emerging from their chrysalises, or emerge too rapidly, damaging their soft abdomens in the process. Commonly, their wings will not unfurl upon emergence. If anyone is interested in reading more about OE, click here.

The kids took it all in stride, and found the research into the cause interesting. We all agreed to call Magic Wings and let them know about our findings, because it sounds like a huge concern for butterfly raisers, and we wanted to make sure the proper disinfection procedures were followed to prevent future generations of their monarchs from being infected. I talked to a fellow in the gift shop, who was pretty confused about what I was talking about, but upon my urging did promise to pass my message on to the curator in charge of raising the butterfly larvae and chrysalises that they sell. I tried to keep it simple so that the message would get into the right hands -- that the butterflies seemed to have OE. With any luck, he wrote it down. I'm sure the curator will know what it is and what to do about it.

In any case, I'm trying to embrace the entire thing as a learning experience. In reading about OE, we also came across some interesting info and photos of chrysalis parasites, which helped to bring about some resolution of what happened to our first Monarch. I've now learned NOT to buy larva or chrysalises from facilities that grow them, as these sorts of problems are very common when caterpillars are kept in large numbers in close quarters. And I was reassured that collecting caterpillars from the wild is not only not harmful to the species, but actually encouraged by stewards of the Monarch. Being so sensitive to environmental toxins and hazards, Monarchs are in need of a helping hand, and raising Monarchs indoors produces a 90% survival rate to adulthood, as opposed to a 10% or less survival rate in the wild. So next summer we'll be on the lookout for caterpillars to lend our own little hand to the stewardship of these beautiful insects.

But, you know, for right now I'm totally bummed....