The Monarch's Shield
why software engineers winter in cdmx explained
Across America’s warming creeks and fields, monarch butterflies fill milkweed plants with tiny white eggs. From the eggs emerge young caterpillars who feast on the plants on which their mother set them. The caterpillars grow bigger and bigger, we’ve all read that book, and then they spin a chrysalis. Inside the shielded chrysalis chamber they transform into a butterfly and gain the power of flight. They exit the chrysalis and begin a new life in the air. Adult butterflies subsist on wildflower nectar, no longer needing the milkweed leaves they ate as children.
A monarch butterfly lives for just a few weeks. Generations pass in a single summer. But when the world gives the first signs that it will grow cold, signs that grow harder to read as a result of the American project, the final generation of the summer heads south to Mexico to survive. These monarchs possess knowledge of the path south and their duty to make that journey, though they were birthed by parents who only knew the easy life in warm summer air over lushgreen fields. The migratory generation lives months longer than its parents and grandparents. Their tiny bodies fly a thousand miles, through a path that now runs through desolate agricultural land kept clean of wildflowers to maximize yield. When the odyssey home is complete they rest on warm trees in Mexico and wait for their return next summer.
The infographic warned that monarch caterpillars raised in captivity do not have the same potential to reach Mexico as their wild counterparts. In a cage, cared for by humans for their entire lives, they learn a dependency that hampers them even as a butterfly. Sophia sat on the couch next to Liam and read the infographic on Facebook. It was August, and the air conditioning was roaring. Liam was six years old and spending more time at home now that first grade was done. He rolled plastic cars across his own body and her body, and sometimes watched the lights on her computer. He made car noises to remind her that he was there.
The threat of raising a monarch not suited for the increasingly harsher outside world didn’t change Sophia’s mind about the project. She’d searched out the Facebook group to learn more about basic care for a caterpillar, and she’d found plenty of information on that. She’d kept scrolling past maps and infographics because intermixed with those were cute photos of children setting their butterflies free. She wanted Liam to watch a tiny living thing grow, it was a cute way for him to learn to take care of the world, and it wasn’t on a screen. They could make a map tracing its path to Mexico once they set it free. She ordered a plastic cage to hold a caterpillar from Amazon.
A few days later, in the middle of the afternoon, the cage arrived. The doorbell rang, but by the time Sophia walked from the living room through the kitchen to the front room the delivery worker was already gone. She opened the front door to the sound of insects buzzing in the hot summer air. Various brands of crossover SUVs parked in driveways of other houses in the cul-de-sac were motionless. The cardboard box waited on the welcome mat.
Sophia walked back to the kitchen and called Liam over. She placed the box on the granite countertop and cut it open to find another box inside. The inner box was almost identical in size to the outer one, perfectly measured by Amazon engineering. The second box was white and smooth, and had a picture of the caterpillar cage with a yellow monarch caterpillar happily inside. The cage was translucent plastic on all sides but one, with a green plastic lid. In the middle of the plastic lid was a clear plastic door that could be opened to release the butterfly or give the caterpillar food.
She opened the second box and took out the cage, and explained to Liam what their project would be. Liam’s eyes connected with hers for the majority of her explanation, but he didn’t say much back. He asked if the caterpillar would be scary and she said no. Sophia checked her phone for a few seconds. Liam sat on the elevated kitchen chairs and looked at the images on the box. Sophia set down her phone and explained to him that they would go to the creek to look for caterpillar eggs on the milkweed plants there. She pulled Liam from the chair and together they walked to the front door. She put Liam’s child Keens on his feet.
It took ten minutes for the two of them to walk to the creek. It was a hot and sunny walk, past newly planted maple trees that didn’t provide much shade. Sophia had sunglasses on but Liam didn’t, and he squinted as they walked but didn’t complain. He stayed in front of her at all times, and crossed the quiet streets with confidence. A teenage girl on a bike rode by them, and Sophia wordlessly smiled at her.
The creek ran through the subdivision and divided two long rows of backyards. Where the creek intersected with the road it was covered by a drain and asphalt bridge. The bridge had a black safety rail made of two metal bars, one bar at adult hand height and one at child hand height. Older trees flanked the creek on either side. Below the older trees were smaller native plants, left to run wild in the corner of the ecosystem that the neighborhood landscapers didn’t touch, and that’s where the milkweed was.
Sophia went off the sidewalk into the creek. Liam stood on the bridge and watched, grasping the black metal bar. She quickly found milkweed, not that deep into the creek, reachable from the manicured parts of the grass. She went back up to the bridge and had Liam come with her. Together, they flipped over milkweed leaves, looking for the white orbs of caterpillar eggs. Liam looked at the leaves lower on the plant while Sophia looked at ones higher. Liam found a leaf with three eggs.
All three eggs hatched, eventually. Liam checked them every morning, sitting on the kitchen stool to view the plastic cage on the counter, until one day he found two caterpillars crawling on the leaf. The caterpillars were just tiny yellow lines but they already made holes in the milkweed as they ate.
The third egg was still on the leaf, and its siblings had either consciously or unconsciously not eaten it. Sophia wasn’t sure what to do, wasn’t sure if caterpillar cannibalism was a possibility or if she was worrying for no reason. She only had one cage, so she didn’t have anywhere to put the third egg. But she kept worrying. She took the milkweed leaf out of the cage, with the two little caterpillars on it, and cut out the portion of the leaf that held the egg with kitchen scissors. She placed the cut-out egg in one corner of the cage on another milkweed leaf, and the full leaf with the two caterpillars in the opposite corner. She gave the two hatched caterpillars a second milkweed leaf.
The third egg hatched a week later. It came out like a little yellow line too, and started eating in its corner. On the other corner the two caterpillars were growing bigger. The bigger two went through their initial milkweed supply, so Sophia and Liam walked to the creek to get more food for them. Liam lifted the see-through lid of the plastic caterpillar cage and put his hand through it to deliver the milkweed. He still watched them every morning.
As the caterpillars grew bigger they roamed around the plastic cage, so Sophia and Liam stopped putting leaves in each corner and distributed them across the container. Caterpillar poop piled up at the bottom. Sophia cleaned the cage in a free moment while Liam was on his iPad. The caterpillars went through the milkweed again, so they went back to the creek and brought even more leaves this time.
The two big caterpillars climbed to the top of the cage. One of them climbed the side of the cage to green plastic roof in the morning, and by the afternoon the other had joined it. They spun themselves green chrysalises.
Both caterpillars emerged from their chrysalis as a butterfly. Liam watched the cage every day for a week, checking in on the chrysalises and the untransformed caterpillar below. One morning he was delighted with two orange and black butterflies hanging from the ceiling of the cage, their chrysalises ripped open next to them. He wanted to set them free right then so they could get going to Mexico, but Sophia reminded him that they had to wait for their wings to dry. Liam sighed but understood.
The next day, Sophia and Liam took the cage out to the back patio to release the monarch butterflies. They opened the plastic lid and Liam put his hand in to pull them out. Each butterfly spent time on Liam’s finger before it took off into the open world. Sophia had read posts about identifying the gender of the butterfly based on the spots on its wings, but now that the time was here she couldn’t remember how to do that. She took pictures of Liam with each butterfly on his finger.
They went inside because it was still hot out. Liam was pleased that the butterflies were on their way. He discussed the monarch route to Mexico using the same information Sophia had taught him a few weeks ago, but said it to her like it was freshly derived in his own mind. Together the two of them felt confident that their two butterflies would make it there before it was too cold. They went back to the creek to get a little more milkweed for their third caterpillar.
The third caterpillar was alone in the cage, but he was big now. He climbed to the top and spun his chrysalis two days after the other two left. But instead of spinning his chrysalis on the green plastic, he’d spun it on the clear lid, where Liam’s tiny hand had brought in the milkweed leaves and where they’d released the butterflies. Nothing was explicitly wrong with that, the cage was plastic everywhere, but something looked wrong. Liam and Sophia waited, but their attention levels on the cage waned. There wasn’t even much to watch in the cage now, just one stationary chrysalis. They didn’t need to go to the creek to get milkweed.
The third butterfly never emerged. A week passed, and then its chrysalis started to blacken. When another week passed and its fate was certain, while Liam was inside, Sophia took the cage out to the backyard and blasted the insides clean with the hose. It was the first day of September.
Thanks for the thorough explanatin, ch. I will be staring at the ceiling for a while if you don't mind.