Today a late blooming monarch butterfly was assisted in its normal trip south without lifting a wing! "Butterfly Lady" Marleen Manos-Jones had been keeping her eye on arthropod since September when it was in the mid-stages of metamorphosis. Soon all the other butterflies in her Albany neighborhood
had begun their trip south, covering thousands of miles to Mexico's Sierra Madre Mountains. When Marleen saw the
butterfly emerge from its pupa, she felt the butterfly belonged with the departed butterflies, along their journey south, so as to survive the frigid New York winter. After receiving permission to bring the butterfly aboard a southwest flight and obtaining a butterfly traveling permit, Manos-Jones prepared the butterfly's habitat. The butterfly traveled in a small tupperware with holes to breath accompanied by a damp cloth of sugar water. She then had the tupperware surrounded in another container with ice to help keep the butterfly calm and cool on its journey.
“I knew if I just let her go, she'd die,” Manos-Jones said. “But she's so fabulous she deserves to be in Mexico with all of her millions of brothers and sisters. She was such a magnificent specimen, and my heart just responded to her.”
Manos Jones has raised and released thousands of butterflies of her own and worked at the American Museum of Natural History's seasonal butterfly conservatory for over a decade. Today she released the tardy butterfly in the San Antonio Botanical Gardens, hoping to reunite it with its brothers and sisters along their epic trek across America.
Did You Know?
Monarch Butterflies are the only species of butterfly that make the amazing migration across our country. It takes three to four generations of monarchs to make the journey north to south and back every year.
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