A butterfly’s best friend
If you were a Monarch butterfly making your way through Danbury TX, you would be wise to stop at Karen’s house. Unlike anyone else I know, Karen is a butterfly BFF.
Right now a monarch population explosion is taking place in her backyard, and she’s doing her best to help them thrive. Eggs, tiny caterpillars and fat striped caterpillars abound.
It’s a delicate business, though. Even after allowing delicious milkweed to spring up all over her yard, Karen can’t keep enough food on hand for the swarm of very hungry caterpillars.
See what I mean? All but one of about 50 of these plants has been stripped bare. Do you have milkweed in your yard? If so, Karen would love for you to adopt some of her wiggly, ravenous friends — and hurry, please!!
Being a BBFF is a bit of an emotional roller coaster ride. There’s the thrill of spotting a mother butterfly, followed by the hunt for tiny eggs and the very first baby caterpillars. The hungry caterpillar stage can be stressful, especially when food runs low and the herd is further thinned by sly green lizards.
But when you notice some of the caterpillars curling up into J-shapes and soon afterward discover the first chrysalises of the season, that’s when the real drama begins. Will they continue to develop properly? Will lizards carry them away?
I could stare all day at the delicate gold and sapphire filagree gracing this chrysalis. See the lines and pattern of the furled wings inside? Absolutely spectacular.
Soon Karen’s garden will be bursting with a brand new sort of life, this time all aflutter instead of crawling, chewing or quietly waiting to be transformed. Her new butterfly friends will step fully into their new selves and eventually fly away into their new lives, never to be caterpillars again. And Karen will be grateful to once again witness the gospel story proclaimed by God’s Creation.
If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation:
everything old has passed away;
see, everything has become new!
2 Corinthians 5:17
Laurie Heath Studio 
This is perhaps the most unoriginal comment ever, but your pictures are gorgeous! 🙂 We used to bring monarch caterpillars inside and watch them become butterflies when I was a kid.