During the end of summer and into the beginning of the school year, I had the opportunity of raising monarch butterflies. It was a great experience that I look forward to doing again next year.

It all started when I went to my Dad’s work cook-out next to a giant field of milkweed. My sister and I, and friend Julia, were at the cook-out. Julia and her mother had raised monarch butterflies, and they encouraged us to try it out. Monarch butterflies have four stages in their lives… the egg, the caterpillar stage, the cocoon, and then the butterfly stage.

We could see them munching away on milkweed leaves (which is the only thing that they will eat at the second stage of their lives). Then we would just simply pick the leaves off with them still attached and put each one in a separate cup. At the end of our search, we had found a total of 26 caterpillars altogether. My sister and I each had eight and Julia had 10. It was a remarkable outcome.

We then had to gather milkweed so the caterpillars could eat until they felt full enough to go into their third stage (the cocoon/chrysalis). When my sister and I arrived home that night with our 16 caterpillars, we had to find a place for them to temporarily live. Since this was our first time and we were not prepared, we used good size cardboard boxes and placed a screen over the top. After they were all settled in, I anxiously waited and looked to see if any of them had ventured to the top of the box yet. After six days of waiting, one of them finally took a trip to the top of the screen and hung upside down in a J shape.

After a day or so of being in the J shape, it finally made its cocoon. I was so excited. One by one the rest of mine made a trip to the top. One of my caterpillars, though, never made it to the top, but seven out of eight did. In my sister’s box, all eight had made it to the top. The next thing we had to look for was when the cocoon turned black and you could see through the butterfly, and its wings folded up and you could see all of the beautiful markings and colors on them. One to three days later, a butterfly hatched out of one of the cocoons. It stayed at the bottom of its cocoon for a little while so its wings could dry. The next day, another one hatched and I decided that they could be flight partners.

After its wings had dried and it had taken a few flaps, I decided that it was time to let them go. I lifted up the screen carefully so I would not disturb the cocoons that were still there. I grabbed the two butterflies and set them down on a flower. I guess they weren’t ready, though, because they didn’t fly. So I put them both back in the box and waited until I got home from school that next afternoon to let them go. They both flew off. It was a great feeling to see my butterflies flying away. Now that they were fully-grown they no longer ate milkweed. They drank nectar from flowers using their proboscis, basically a long tongue used to drink the nectar. They fly all the way to Mexico so that they can survive the winter. The ones that do make it back next spring will lay their eggs in the same milkweed field that they had been born in and the cycle will repeat itself.