Monica Monarch - children's story and illustration

Monica Monarch

May 2007

Hi. My name is Monica Butterfly. In my past life I was an ugly, yellow and black caterpillar. I don't remember it but I am told that all I did was eat and eat and eat the leaves of my milkweed plant where I was born. I made it ugly but I didn't kill it. People and their pesticides kill my beloved milkweeds.

I ate my milkweed until I was so big and full that I had to hang upside down on a leaf. In several days I turned into a light green and gold bejeweled chrysalis. I hung there for about ten days until I showed right through the outer cover of my cocoon. Then one morning, I peeled away my chrysalis and I had to hang there, upside down for a couple of days until my wings dried. That milkweed plant was a good incubator for me. When I saw it again it was growing all its leaves back.

Now I am a beautiful monarch butterfly and I can flap my wings and soar. I also stop and land on equally beautiful flowers so I can drink their delicious nectar. I am so sorry that all I do is eat plants so I try to give back to them by helping them reproduce. Unfortunately, I don't really spread plant pollen very well. My friends the honeybees do that job much better. Reproducing is my most important job which is another reason I land on my friends, the plants. That's where I lay my eggs.

All sorts of creatures want to eat me. However, because of the milkweed that fed me when I was a caterpillar, I am poisonous and don't taste good. The birds, bugs and beasts are very sorry if they try to eat me. My plain and dull cousins just hide on plants and another of my dull cousins, the viceroy has started to imitate my beautiful looks so that those other bugs and animals also think he is poisonous. He is clever with his disguise. We butterflies never attack anyone. We are peaceful creatures.

I live in North America but I have to go now because I must travel to where it is more warm and humid to lay my eggs to hatch my ugly, little baby caterpillars. Well, maybe they aren't really so ugly. I will live longer than my monarch relatives in Costa Rica or New Zealand because the weather is always right for them to lay their eggs there and they don't need to travel to make their offspring. They can stay in their lovely little countries but they don't get to live as long when they are grown up butterflies as I do. I live for about nine months which is just enough for me.