In a few weeks, the fence of primary school is a place where migrants gather before leaving. The fence is popular due to its temperature and the protection it offers. The sun hits the fence from mid -morning to the end of the afternoon of May, and many years of sunshine have turned what should have been a dark wood into a faded gray. But the fence also has a line of two by four horizontal approximately one third of the road to the upper part, which seems to be the ideal combination of warmth and refuge for monarch caterpillars.
I would also like to think that the fence has a special energy, a border that is already in tune with small creatures that sail the world for wonder and sugar. In May, going to school seems less drag, so close to summer, than a metamorphosis clock. Every day, another pale green caterpillar finds a place throughout the wood from which to hang in the form of J. In the afternoon, it has become a pale green chrysalide dotted with gold.
While inside, these caterpillars are assuming the shape of their departure, other arrivals surround us. Last week, I arrived at the beach to find the surface dotted with bubbles the size of a child. In the water, the bubbles became candles. The blue velella of blue body, or sailors by wind, floated in the cove in a quiet day, with each waves pushing them closer to the shore.
Many of them have touched earth. Yesterday morning, on the way to school, we find one sitting in the medium roof of grass to a room of the ocean mile. Your candles are not destined to the flight. Had a bird helped? Maybe it looked like an easy meal, stranded on the shore. Their toxins are enough for the plankton they eat, and perhaps sufficient so that they are also unattractive for possible predators.
However, this sailor looked like a piece of blue magic under gray skies. The monarchs are another. Every day, we observe their crisalis while darkening and then becomes translucent, so that you can see the intricate wings inside. Once the butterflies make their way to the air, they will tune in with magnetic fields and environmental signs and begin their leg of the north trip. We do not know if these caterpillars throughout the fence are the offspring of the monarchs that pass the winter here, or in the middle of the retransmission chain of the monarchs that make the migra of Mexico, one generation at the same time.
The monarchs seem to know that the best time to emerge in the tranquility that occurs in the recess court when all children are still in class, or the one that descends after the last bell has played for the day and everyone has gone home. Our beloved cross guard, who also reaches tranquility, has taken photos of the monarchs when they simply release. I imagine that each one is surprised and blinking the thousands of lenses in their compound eyes.
Each spring, publishes their photos of the monarchs along the calm near the sun so that even if we lose the time of their departure, we can remember them long after they have gone.
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Images: Chris Cottrell (monarch), Cameron Walker (Sailor by wind).
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