It was with good intentions that I headed out to the north side of the house this morning. My idea was to clean the frog pond after letting it sit dormant for the winter. Keeping a spotless pond in the cool months is rather insensitive to the critters. They need that leaf mulch in the bottom, the algae floating in the water and the overgrowth of lilies and hyacinths to help them keep warm. Once it warms, however, I NEED it cleaned. It was with high hopes that the deed would be done today since I have recently been hearing the frogs and toads starting their calling. It will not be long before the pond is a nursery for little tadpoles and the cleaning will not get done. Yep...I had good intentions.
Just as I started pulling the roots of the hyacinths, a critter caught my eye and that ended the whole shebang. A dragonfly nymph was making its way up the stem of an elephant ear. The tiny new growth of the plant was to be the morphing spot for the dragonfly. Being as I was witness to the beginning of this process, I figured I had better just sit back and be here for the long haul. In the past, the morphing took about an hour. Boy! Was I in for a surprise! This fellow took two whole hours to change but, in all fairness, the critter obviously had some underlying issues that made it difficult.
My first clue that something was wrong was when the dragonfly exited its husk and bent over backwards. Hmmm. This never happened before. After often being reprimanded for interfering with the natural course of things, I suppressed the wish to help the critter. (I am not sure just how I would have helped anyway.) At this point, I will admit to interfering just a wee bit when the little fellow lost its grip and fell into the water. I gently lifted him up to a leaf so he could get a good grip. Then the insect was back on its own.
About an hour and a half into the morphing, I noticed that the tail of the dragonfly seemed to be misshapened. Poor little guy! Still, the critter was determined to complete the change and was soon stretching its wings to their complete length. It took a while for the wings to become functional but it was that tail that bothered me.
The dragonfly did make it through the morphing stage and did take flight...sort of...maybe. Without the sturdy tail to act as a rudder, the little guy was sort of limping along (if one can limp in flight). There is no way of telling exactly what went wrong but, chances are, it was something that occurred while the insect was still a nymph. Perhaps one of the resident frogs took a nip at the nymph or it had gotten squished at some point. Still, the determination of the nymph to make the change and become a dragonfly was inspiring. For the critter to take flight was downright amazing. Good luck, little one! You are going to need it.
Mother Nature has this weird and wonderful thing down pat. Mark and I went out to purge the spinach patch of snails when he discovered something that I found to be rather remarkable. He pointed out a chrysalis that had been attached under the back porch railing. Hmmm? Does it not seem to be a tad cold for a butterfly to be thinking of developing? I pondered that thought as I photographed the tiny case.
The case appears to be that of a Monarch Butterfly. The caterpillar also seems to be close to emerging as a full grown butterfly. The chrysalis starts out as bright green but as the butterfly inside starts to develop, the case starts to show the colors of the butterfly's wings. This one was already darkening so it should not be long before the side splits and the critter emerges. It will hang for a while under the railing while it unfolds and flexes its wings. Then off into the world it will fly...cold weather or not.
Monarch Butterflies are a bit different that most other butterflies. While they go through basically the same changes from egg to adult during the spring and summer months, come late fall, things change. The average life span of the adult warm-weather critters is anywhere from two to five weeks. During that time, the butterfly eats, mates and lays eggs. The eggs will hatch in a few days and the critters starts life as tiny caterpillars. For two weeks, the caterpillars eat milkweed. They grow and grow until finally each will create a chrysalis. Inside its chrysalis, each caterpillar will go through metamorphosis. The change takes about two weeks then a beautiful butterfly crawls out to start the cycle all over again. The late fall butterfly crawls out of the chrysalis, eats but does not mate. Instead, it starts migrating. Its life lasts up to eight months. During that time the butterfly migrates southward and mates once it reaches its destination. The new batch of butterflies emerge usually in February or March. These will start the migration back northward. They will mate, lay eggs and let the cycle continue. Our friend seems to be a bit early.
I am curious to see if the critter survives the next few nights. Our weather has taken a turn to the chilly side which cannot feel too happy for the morphing butterfly. Hopefully, since the chrysalis is dangling on the south side of the porch, it will be protected from the icy winds. I will keep watch. Oh...one obviously just did its metamorphosis since right next to this case was an empty shell. Hopefully, that butterfly did well! I better plant more milkweed!
