Every time MaryAnn Oakland sees a Monarch butterfly flutter from her hand into the blue sky yonder she says that it fills her with great joy.
Having witnessed it over 700 times, her joy must be overflowing.
In 2007 Oakland became invested in the plight of the Monarch butterfly when an article made her aware of the uphill battle that Minnesota’s state insect faces today as a result of man’s impact on the environment.
Realizing that she could provide the Monarch with the extra boost it needs to subsist without threat during its transformation from vulnerable egg to full grown butterfly, she decided to take matters into her own hands.
In the first year of her efforts, Oakland reared 12 Monarchs from egg to adult. The next year she upped her output ten-fold to 123, then last year reached 317. This year she has raised 261. She gives an excited chuckle when she says she’s on pace to exceed 500.
“I just want to know I’ve saved as many as I can,” Oakland explains. “It just makes me happy.”
MaryAnn’s husband Steve, gives the impression that he oscillates between a perspective that is either dumbfounded or filled with admiration.
“I can understand why you do it. But I don’t understand why you do it,” he smiles. “It’s quite the process.”
It is quite the process, and its extremely time-consuming. But to MaryAnn its worth every minute.
The yearly crusade begins when she sets out to gather Monarch eggs, which are found as just specks and always on the leaf of the milkweed plant. Milkweed is essential to the Monarch because of cardenolides the butterflies use to develop their defense system. Emerging from the egg as a caterpillar, the insects devour the plant and sequester the cardenolides, which then deter most birds and other potential predators because of their toxic nature.
Milkweed grows fast and wild, but nevertheless in increasingly fewer locations, due to the expansion of urban sprawl and agricultural lands. Living in rural Clarkfield and the owners of the Prairie Produce vegetable stand – located one mile east of the city along Highway 67 – the Oaklands are well aware of how the Monarchs can be affected. Steve says he no longer tills without the focused intent of avoiding the essential milkweed; he knows that MaryAnn will need all she can find when she’s collecting 500 eggs. Traveling farm country’s gravel roads, she can frequently be found scanning culverts and the edges of fields looking for other sources of milkweed before they’re mowed over.
Collecting the eggs from late May through early October, she places each one with a portion of the milkweed inside of a Kerr jar. The emerging caterpillars are then made safe not only from the blade but parasites, bugs and birds. In nature fewer than one in ten eggs survive to become an adult.
During their roughly week-long life as a caterpillar, “they’re constantly eating and pooping,” says MaryAnn. The excrement builds up, and so after a full day’s work at the Thrifty White in Montevideo, as well as a couple of hours in the garden, she spends the remainder of the evening cleaning out the jars.
Once full grown the caterpillars make their way to the top of the Kerr jar, which is covered with a paper towel, and attach themselves upside down in the shape of a “J.” In the pupa or chrysalis stage, the Monarch molts its skin revealing a green exoskeleton from which it emerges as a butterfly after about two weeks. The exoskeleton becomes translucent a day before it emerges. When it crawls forth it reveals a bulbous body full of fluid and crumpled wings. The wings slowly expand as an undulating body pumps them full of the fluid. In approximately 30 minutes the wings are full breadth, but the butterfly remains for a few hours while they dry.
MaryAnn keeps the jars in her house unless the butterflies are about to leave the chrysalis, in which case she puts them in her trunk and takes them to work. She documents and attempts to photograph each butterfly prior to its departure, writing down the time that they make their way from the exoskeleton and, yes, she even names them.
Usually the names are chosen in alphabetical order, however the most recent butterfly, on this particular Saturday morning was named after her favorite waitress at the Granite Falls Hardee’s, Marlene. She said she has gone so far as to purchase a baby naming book to help with ideas, an act that she attempted to keep from her husband.
“When I saw it I wondered if we were going to have a boy or a girl,” he quipped.
During the busiest time of the approximately four month Monarch season – from late May to early October – MaryAnn can spend as many as three to four hours a day cleaning jars, looking for eggs and documenting new butterflies, but most days says she just spends two.
At times she tells herself, “I’ve got to ease off cause I do have green beans to pick.” But her tone seems to indicate that relaxing is not likely.
Where each of MaryAnn’s Monarchs end up will depend on the time they first hatch. Those born in the spring will live for a few months, reproduce and die. But those born in the fall will migrate to the Mariposa Biosphere Reserve in the Mexican states of Michuacan and Mexico, before returning to the states the following year to start the cycle anew.
Lost habitat and pesticides in the United States along with deforestation in Mexico make it a more treacherous journey for the butterflies, but with the continued efforts of Monarch enthusiasts like MaryAnn Oakland the butterflies are sure to thrive.
And that’s a good thing, because just about everyone loves a Monarch. Some just more than others.
