Butterfly Lessons

​Right now, my life is filled with messiness.

Loved ones who need assistance with life-threatening illness. My back is complaining from my recent endeavors, so I have to do exercises for it. I care for babies and kids; they make big messes, sometimes on me. My house is messy. My pets have messy moments. Relationships are messy at times. My writing space is, well let's just say that I can find things, but others who want something from my office can not. Some people thrive on messiness. Artists and inventors  often create wonderful art or solutions to problems in the midst of messiness.

For the past couple of summers I have raised monarch butterflies in my house. In my office, in fact. With the door closed it is a haven for little caterpillars working on becoming butterflies. We frequently use the butterfly's process of pupating to express the uncertainty of proceeding through changes in our lives. "Just hang in there," we say to one another. "A butterfly will emerge from all this. It will be beautiful!" Butterflies make it look so easy! A quiet yet spunky, persistant caterpillar emerges from a practically microscopic egg stuck to a milkweed leaf. It blends in so well with the leaf that we can hardly see it. First it eats the egg casing it came out of. It looks like a black dot (its head) munching its way around in a circle on the leaf. When it's ready, it sheds its skin and eats that, too. The caterpillar's skin changes to the familiar black, yellow and white stripes. Eat some more milkweed leaf. Eliminate the waste, called frass. Grow a little longer and bigger in circumference. This is the focused life of a caterpillar. It sheds its skin three more times, each time becoming longer and larger, until after nine to sixteen days it somehow knows to stop eating and eliminates its last frass. Suddenly, it's on a mission: crawling away from the milkweed to a quiet, safe place where it rests momentarily. It glues its tail end to a stick or something else firm off of the ground using a fine webbing of silk. Next it hangs by its tail forming the shape of a J and begins to pulsate internally, pulling itself into an "o" shape, and back down into a J. If you look away at this point to check your cell phone, by the time you look back at the caterpillar it is gone, and in its place is a shiny, mint green, ovular chrysalis with a black "stem" attached to the silky web. It will stay this way for eight to fifteen days, gradually becoming darker and darker, wearing sparkling gold jewelry, thus the name monarch. At the end of this pseudo-gestation period, a wrinkled but beautiful bright orange and black butterfly will slowly, patiently slide out of its translucent membrane, unfurl its wings and fly away to find out the lay of the land. Looking for flowers, it will drink nectar to restore its energy while it searches for a mate.

Sounds neat and organized, doesn't it? It is, for the most part, and since butterflies are insects their bodies are following a predetermined schedule of transformation. Individual butterflies don't question their purpose, decide to go on a vacation, or demand a different schedule. They quietly do what they're created to do....unless...someone or something interferes with that schedule. Then, their lives become downright messy! Parasites may lay eggs in a caterpillar, causing it to die when the alien eggs hatch, releasing the newly emerged flies or mites. And though the chrysalis looks shiny and smooth and even peaceful on the outside, what's happening inside is anything but! I have accidently disturbed a caterpillar in the stage of forming the chrysalis (pupating), killing it and turning it into a puddle of bright green goo with no sign of a caterpillar or butterfly body. It was like a scene out of a horror movie. It worried me for days! Once I realized that the goo was just part of the process, and how fragile the chrysalids are I felt relieved and ready to try again with a new caterpillar. 

Maybe we can learn a lesson from this. When life throws a wrench in our neatly organized plans, relax and remember that the green goo before you is simply a messy part of life.