Date: 09/14/2006

Number: 1

Thursday I found an adult monarch that did not manage to get its wings pumped up much at all. It's abdomen was almost normal size yet its wings were far from spread out. That was a first I've seen that in the wild. I have seen it when a captive one didn't get a good enough diet before it entered the chrysalis stage.

Once a captive chrysalis fell down and got damaged so I dissected it. In the goo that I was examining with a stereo microscope I saw what must have been its heart, beating. That was neat!

To my students I describe the monarch's largely dissolving within its emerald container on the way to transforming into a totally new creature as being equivalent to "precipitating a butterfly out of a test tube." It's miraculous, to me.

Waterloo, IA

Latitude: 42.4 Longitude: -92.3

Observed by: Tom
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