Despite no pictures, I have some good news to share.  Six out of the seven Mexican Monarchs hatched today.  We had 4 Males and 2 Females.  As soon as I opened the enclosure they flew away.

So all you folks in the North get ready!  I think we’ve seen all the Monarchs we’re going to see until later in the year.  I haven’t seen any at all and certainly no eggs.  I’m hopeful they will be able to build up their numbers as they Journey North.

The light was terrible, but I wanted to share the first pictures I was able to get this season.

Mexican Monarch Chrysalis

I also wanted to share a close-up macro picture of one of the Chrysalises. The thing that really struck me about this close-up shot are the ridges on that golden band.  It’s really amazing that these Caterpillars can go from that, to something like these Chrysalises.

Mexican Monarch Chrysalis Up Close

Because of the extreme cold, I didn’t feel it was warm enough to release the last 3 hatchlings.  The cold weather allowed us to master the art of hand feeding Butterflies.  The technique is as follows:

1. One small lid
2. Cottonballs
3. Grape Juicy-Juice
4. Toothpick

What we did to keep the Butterflies alive was to soak the cottonballs in the Juicy-Juice and place them on a small lid.  I would gently hold the Butterfly while Leecy would use the toothpick to extend their proboscis.  Once the proboscis was extended into the Juicy-Juice, the Butterflies would naturally start sucking up the nectar.  This method enabled us to keep these Butterflies alive for over a week indoors.

Back to the title of this post.

One particular Butterfly was very anxious to be released as he was constantly flying around his enclosure (the enclosure was indoors and positioned towards the sun).  In his over-excitement, he tore one of his wings and could no longer fly.  There was no way I was not going to make some attempt at helping this Butterfly since he had endured so much already.

What I did was grab some super glue and baby powder.  While I held the Butterfly, Leecy applied the super glue to the torn wing with a toothpick.  After she smeared a small amount of super glue to the torn wing, she dabbled on a little baby powder so that it wouldn’t stick to the opposite wing.

Surprisingly, this “Butterfly Wing Repair” actually worked and the Butterfly was able to fly with no problems!

While I still didn’t think it was warm enough to release the last remaining Butterflies, I decided to let them make the decision.  I brought them outdoors to get as warm as possible (the temperature was around the upper 40′s).  I also gave them some additional Juicy-Juice (they knew how to use it by now).  After about 10 minutes in the sun, the Butterfly with the torn wing flew high in the sky!  He didn’t just fly a short distance, he flew for as long as I could see him.

Fortunately, I did decide to dust off the camera (I haven’t been taking many pictures lately) and take a few photos of the repaired wing.  Looking down at the Butterfly, it’s the left wing that was repaired.

Monarch Butterfly With Repaired Wing

Here’s something else that’s interesting.  Take a look at this photo showing the Monarch Chrysalises.  Don’t they look a little strange?  To me it looks as though the Chrysalises are deformed.  Maybe that’s because of living in microgravity (or even better, maybe someone associated with this research can comment).

Another question I have for anyone who may know the answer.  In this experiment, did they not plan on providing any food source for these Butterflies (correction, apparently they did have a nectar source according to this article)?  Have they ever tried to grow Milkweed in space?  I think it would have been an interesting experiment to have these Monarchs emerge from their Chrysalises, float over to a Milkweed plant that perhaps was growing well under artificial light, sip on some nectar from the plant (or the Gatorade as it turns out (see article above), then lay a few hundred eggs, then repeat the cycle.

And yet one more question that comes to mind.  If Monarch’s use their antennae as a sort of GPS for their migration, what happens when they are in space?  I’m not sure if sunlight even is available (viewable through a window or something?) on the Space Station, but it might make for an interesting experiment at some point.  If the Monarchs could somehow have a view of the Sun, would they attempt to fly in some certain direction?

Then again, I’m no space scientist and for all I know to do this type of experiment in space would cost millions of dollars.  I also don’t understand gravity (or lack thereof), or how the Space Station works, so maybe my great research ideas are just a bunch of nonsense.

Anyone have any additional thoughts or comments?

I just found this link that has a brief video showing the Monarch Caterpillars.  It’s pretty interesting (if you are into Butterflies) watching these two Monarch Caterpillars fight with one another.

You may notice that the Queen Chrysalis looks almost identical to the Monarch Chrysalis

Tiny Queen Chrysalis

Ending this on a bright note, we did see something we haven’t seen in over 2 years and hundreds of butterfly hatchings.  What we saw today happens in about 5 seconds and it’s hard to know when it will occur.  Here’s what happens.  As the caterpillar forms that familiar J shape to work towards the final Chrysalis, it basically splits open.  The green part starts to come out while the skin continues to split.  Right when they close up into the final part of the Chrysalis, its skin simply falls to the ground.  How about a picture showing just how many Chrysalis we currently have?

Multiple Chrysalis

You might have to click on the picture to view the full size to be able to see just how many of them there are