This morning as I was cleaning out our butterfly house and replacing some of the plants for the caterpillars within, I heard a small cracking noise and looked up to see a monarch butterfly slowly emerging from its chrysalis. It is such a spectacular sight to watch, especially knowing how the life of the butterfly began.

It emerges by splitting the now translucent chrysalis along the length of the proboscis near its head. The monarch then slowly moves its legs out, holding on while removing the rest of its body. The body is swollen with fluid when it first emerges. The monarch will begin pumping fluid from its body to the veins of its extremely soft wings. According to “Florida’s Fabulous Butterflies” the wings expand by the pressure of the fluids moving through the veins on its wings. Once completed, the body shrinks to a normal size. The monarch then hangs upside down, we have seen for more than two hours at times, drying, hardening, its wings before it’s ready to take its first flight.

Today we had six successful hatches in our butterfly house, all of which emerged before 10 a.m. Once they began flying around the butterfly house we released them into our butterfly garden. Some flew to the branches of trees, while others flew to areas where they could sit longer.

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