Butterfly Dream

 A few weeks ago, Ken was awakened at 3:00 am with a very clear, distinct dream.  It was an unusual dream: half dream; half remembrances in his life.  At the first of it, he was a child collecting monarch butterfly caterpillars and milkweed, putting them in a jar and watching the caterpillar eat the milkweed, spin it's chrysalis, then hatch as a beautiful monarch.  Then, in the dream, he was teaching our daughters to do the same thing, which we did every year.

This picture was just after the monarch hatched.  It dried out it's wings while on Shonna's head!

Then, in the dream, he was warned that there are fewer and fewer monarchs as the milkweed that they eat is less plentiful.  He woke up very disturbed.  He couldn't go back to sleep.  He got up and went to the computer and googled monarch butterflies and milkweed and found that it was true, the monarch population is dwindling. In the dream he talked to a friend of his, Tony Jones, who is a butterfly specialist.  Ken knows him because he also is a birder.  He finally went back to sleep for about an hour, vowing to find out more.

The next day he called his friend (who happened to be in the Tuscan airport waiting for his flight as he had just taken a group birding and was on his way home.)  Ken asked him if all of this was true.  Tony said it was.  He said that environmentalists were considering declaring monarchs endangered.  Others are fighting that because then people couldn't legally do what Ken did as a child and what we did- collect caterpillars and watch the metamorphosis.  Ken asked what he could do.  They discussed possibilities.  He suggested getting milkweed seeds and planting them in a very shady spot.  Ken asked about asking our parks and recreation department to plant large patches in local parks and Tony thought that was a great idea.  His friend suggested that he and another local expert could give education classes.  Anyway, they had a good discussion that I overheard as Ken had his phone on speakerphone.  

So, what started as a dream has now become a call to save the monarchs.  You can help.  Get horsetail milkweed seeds (you can buy them on Amazon) and plant them in a very shady spot (at least in our climate, Tony said it needed to be shady,) preferably under a tree.  Let's save the monarchs!