By Lisa Schechter
In the play yard at Young Minds preschool, the children and their teachers carefully tended a garden with lovely plants and flowers.
On one side of the yard, was a very special garden. This garden had two planter boxes with big Milkweed plants in them. This is the plant that feeds the Monarch Butterfly caterpillars. It is the only plant that Monarch caterpillars can eat. The children and their teachers gave plenty of water to the plants, but not too much. So the plants grew very big, with lots of leaves for caterpillars to eat.
This is the life of a Monarch.
Each spring, Monarch butterflies fly into town and look for Milkweed plants. The female butterflies lay eggs on the leaves of the plants. When the eggs hatch, the teeny tiny caterpillars that emerge eat the Milkweed leaves.
They eat and eat and eat and grow bigger and bigger and bigger. After about two weeks of eating, they find a sturdy place near the Milkweed bushes from which they can hang upside down. Then they shed their skin and become a beautiful green chrysalis with a band of gold dots around it.
Over the next 10 to 14 days, the insect inside the chrysalis shell changes into a butterfly. Just before the butterfly is ready to come out, the chrysalis turns black and then transparent, so you can see the butterfly wings inside.
Then the butterfly pushes open and out of the shell. After pumping its wings and resting for a while, the butterfly flies off to find flower nectar to eat.
This year was a special one. Butterflies laid many, many eggs on the Milkweed plants in the Young Minds School garden. So many caterpillars emerged from the eggs and hid under the leaves! It was difficult to find and count them all.
The caterpillars ate and ate and grew bigger and bigger.
While the caterpillars were still busy growing, the children and their teachers had a summer break. While the children and teachers were away from school, the caterpillars continued to eat and eat and grow bigger and bigger.
One day during the break, some friends, Lourine and Sandy, visited the school yard to admire the garden. They saw a caterpillar on the ground. Then they turned around and saw the Milkweed plants in the planter boxes.
They were surprised and excited to see lots of caterpillars on the plants! There were at least eight caterpillars crawling around.
Lourine and Sandy also saw thirteen chrysalises! Nine were hanging from the rims of the planter boxes. One was hanging from a jacket hook that was on the wall of the classroom building. Two were hanging from the edge of the building roof. One chrysalis was hanging from a piece of grass! The grass was hiding behind the steps leading to the drinking fountain.
Wow! There were so many caterpillars and chrysalises in one small garden at one time.
This was unusual. It was amazing!
However, Lourine and Sandy also noticed that there were no leaves left on the Milkweed plants. The caterpillars were eating the Milkweed seed pods, which were the only things left on the stems. Most of the seed pods were gone! The caterpillars were getting bigger, but they still had more eating and growing to do. They needed more Milkweed leaves. Oh no!
How could the caterpillars survive?
Then Lourine remembered their friend Lisa had Milkweed plants in her yard. She called and asked Lisa if she could bring the caterpillars to her plants to eat and finish growing. Lisa said that her plants were too small for so many caterpillars. There were not enough leaves for them to eat.
But Lisa said there was a house a block away from her that had two bigger Milkweed bushes in their front yard, enough to feed the Young Minds School caterpillars. Lisa found a small cardboard box and drove to the school to meet Lourine to collect the caterpillars and move them to a new plant with leaves.
Lisa and Lourine moved six caterpillars into the box. They were careful not to squish the soft caterpillars. If a caterpillar was on a seed pod, they took the pod off the branch and moved the caterpillar and seedpod together into the box. If a caterpillar was on a stick, they moved the stick. And then they closed the box.
Two caterpillars were very big and hanging from the planter box edge, getting ready to turn into chrysalises. They were finished eating leaves. So, Lisa and Lourine left those alone.
Lisa drove home with the box. When she arrived home, she opened the box to show her husband Dave the caterpillars. Some were resting, some were crawling, and some were eating seed pods. Dave wanted to help move the caterpillars to a new plant. So, Dave and Lisa walked through the neighborhood with the box to find the Milkweed bushes.
Lisa had noticed the Milkweed bushes in front of this house on her daily walks through the neighborhood for several years. But today when Lisa and Dave reached the house, the front garden looked different. Where there used to be bushes reaching from the ground and up to Lisa’s shoulders, there was only fresh turned soil. A gardener was walking away from the yard with his tools. He had just removed all the bushes! No Milkweed was here for the Young Minds Caterpillars!
What should Lisa and Dave do? Then Lisa remembered there was another house a few more blocks away that had a front yard full of big bushes, lavender and sage and … Milkweed!
Lisa and Dave walked and walked and walked, carefully holding the box of caterpillars steady so they wouldn’t get tossed around as she carried them. Finally they arrived at the yard with the big bushes. There were so many bushes growing close together, it was a little hard to spot the Milkweeds. Were they there? Yes! There were four big bushes with lots of leaves and flowers!
The owner of the house, Sten, was on his front porch when Lisa and Dave arrived and he walked to the sidewalk to talk when he saw them looking at the bushes. Lisa showed Sten the caterpillars and Sten said he would be happy to have the caterpillars live on his Milkweed bushes. Lisa, Dave and Sten picked up the seed pods and sticks with caterpillars crawling on them and rested them in the bushes.
Immediately, the caterpillars crawled off their old seed pods and sticks and started eating the leaves and the flowers of the new bushes.
And so, six caterpillars safely moved on from Young Minds School to explore a new garden and eat and eat and eat and grow and grow and grow, then change into chrysalises and then butterflies!
