Bow and Conservation

Bow is an avid reader of the Missouri Conservationist. 

He enjoys leafing through the entire magazine, but this time, he indicated clearly that his favorite part was a photo of a little girl who looked a little like Ping in Ping & the Snirkelly People and of a Monarch butterfly right in front of her face.

In the little yellow rectangle, an entire conservation strategy is outlined to help preserve the Monarch butterfly.

Why such an "aggressive goal"? And what do Monarchs have to do with pollination?

A Monarch caterpillar on my transplanted common milkweed

My own experience with the Monarch caterpillars this season have been a little disappointing. I did see several different caterpillars in different stages of their growth. But what I never got to see is any of those caterpillars turning into a chrysalis. And having missed that stage, I never saw a Monarch butterfly emerge.

As the caterpillars proceeded with their work and the purple milkweed flowers died and the leaves were left full of holes, I began to wonder about the great effort to reestablish milkweed so as to help the Monarch butterfly, and the total disregard for the wellbeing of the milkweed plant itself.

Purple milkweed does not seem to produce very many seed pods.  Last year mine produced no seed pods at all because somebody -- I don't know who -- ate all the flowers long before anything interesting could happen. This year, a single flower survived long enough to start growing one tiny seed pod.

But the seed pod did not arrive at maturity, because ants attacked it.

Both my milkweed and my Monarchs seem to be productive in the early stages of the procreative process -- flowers, caterpillars -- but not so productive in the later stages -- seed pod, chrysalis. Is this what is happening worldwide? Maybe not.

I have been following the blog of Anurag Agrawal, and he recently a posted an article of his about the decline of the Monarch population that came out in Science. You can look at the article here:

http://www.eeb.cornell.edu/agrawal/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/agrawal-and-inamine-2018-science.pdf

"Mechanisms behind the Monarch's Decline" refers to two independent sources of information about the Monarch population in North America.

One is a census of Monarchs that overwinter in Mexico.

http://www.wwf.org.mx/?uNewsID=324152


And the other is the statistics kept by the North American Butterfly Association.

What Agrawal has found is that there is a mismatch between these two ways of counting total butterflies. Sometimes there is a resurgence of Monarchs in Canada and the United States, but by the time they get down to their over-wintering site in Mexico, the population is greatly reduced.

Loss of habitat for a migratory butterfly can happen anywhere along its migration. But Agrawal has stated that it is the migration, not the butterfly, that is currently endangered. Planting more milkweed in the United States and Canada is not going to help, if the forests in Mexico are being cut down. On the other hand, there are Monarchs in  warm places like parts of California that have a  more local migration, and they are fine. And there are Monarchs in Mexico that seem to be active all year round, without overwintering anywhere. Does the Monarch butterfly need our intervention on its behalf? And if so, why?

Tussock Moth Milkweed Caterpillar

It's not because they are pollinators. They're not. It is not for the sake of fruit orchards. It is not because of any unique contribution that the Monarch makes to our ecology that some other butterfly does not. It's because, for some reason, the Monarch has great PR, and there are people lobbying on its behalf.

Would anybody care about milkweed if not for Monarchs? There are other caterpillars that depend on milkweed, like the tussock moth
 caterpillar, but nobody seems to care much about them. So why the Monarch and why are state and Federal governments intervening on its behalf at taxpayer expense?


Ever since I first read Agrawal's book, Monarchs andMilkweed, I have been noticing some of the less popular milkweed eating insects.

Red Milkweed Beetle (Tetraopes Tetropthalmus)

The red milkweed beetle feeding on a defunct purple milkweed seed pod is so cute. Why doesn't it have a lobbyist in Washington?

Or how about the seed eating milkweed bugs? Why aren't there entire conservation movements built around them?

Milkweed Bug on Butterfly Milkweed

If we look at all this from the point of view of the milkweed plants, their survival strategy seems to be something like this:

• Make yourself inedible by emitting a poison and a nasty latex.
• Some bright insects will breach your defenses and make you their sole source of food in order to thwart predators.
• When farmers start to eradicate you, because you are not good for cattle to feed on, get one of the insects that has managed to breach your defenses and can eat only you to be the poster child for pollinators, even though it's actually not a pollinator.
• Get civic organizations to plant you profusely and governments to assure you acres and acres of protected growth.
• If the poster child butterfly  is still being decimated by its cross country migration, just use this to get even more protection for the propagation of  yourself.
• If, as  a result of being artificially boosted, you lose the ability to propagate naturally through the spread of seeds from seed pods, keep yourself procreating artificially as a domesticated plant.

Two identical butterflies on butterfly milkweed

The truth is that in this age of huge human populations, only those beings protected by us get to thrive. Domestication has a bad name, but if you insist that one plant -- rather than another-- has the right to exist, and that one species, rather than another, will be protected in a given environment, then you are in fact domesticating those species that you protect. Once natural selection ceases to be the main factor in their future adaptations, you will have to act as a cultivator to keep them alive. And when you do that,  you are not advocating natural balance. You will tend to create, instead, a sharp drop in diversity. Monocultures are what humans are famous for.

I love the many species of milkweed that I find growing wild on my land, and the many and varied butterflies that feed on their nectar delight me. But I would hate to think that these are not wildflowers at all, but part of a widespread plot to keep some species alive at taxpayer expense, while others die out.

Why does this matter to me? Because current efforts are afoot to end all breeding of chimpanzees in the United States. This is being done in the name of conservation. It's being done, because conservationists want to maintain only wild chimpanzees, and to eradicate all chimpanzees which have been domesticated.

But wild chimpanzees in Africa will not remain wild if they are protected. Once their natural predators are eliminated and their existence assured, they will change their ways of being.  And domesticated chimpanzees here in the US, which are privately owned, will never have a chance to live free, outside of zoos and sanctuaries.  Generations of Americans will grow up without the opportunity to meet a chimpanzee in a safe and mutually respectful environment.

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When Sword Met Bow

The Merry Month of May

May has been merry. I can't point to any big achievements, but things are moving in a good direction, and we are gaining momentum slowly.

As the weather grew warmer, Bow and I spent more and more time out of doors.

More time outdoors meant more grooming and more mowing the lawn.

While mowing the lawn, I discover butterflies hidden in the grass.

Other things come to my attention, like the common milkweed that I found growing in the lawn.

There were three such plants, and on the day the mowers came, I was going to ask them to transplant them to the flower garden by the lagoon. But when the mowers came, two of the plants were gone, roots and all! At first I was a little paranoid. Had someone followed me and stolen my milkweed before I had a chance to transplant it myself? But my gardener explained to me that it was probably an inside job, performed by moles who ate the milkweed root first, starting deep in the ground and working their way up to the leaves. Only the smallest milkweed plant remained, and after it was transplanted, it wilted and fainted all the way to ground.

The prognosis did not loo good, but I kept watering it. Meanwhile, I discovered a purple milkweed patch growing by some dogbane in the pasture.

This will be a great way to compare the growth and habits of dogbane and milkweed, I thought. But it wasn't only the plants that were starting to propagate. On Mother's Day, I discovered a new nest.

These were not robins' eggs, like the one I had seen in years past. These were brown and white, marbled.

I was looking forward to watching them hatch and seeing what sorts of birds they turned out to be, but the next day, the nest was empty. Is there somebody following me around and taking whatever I find? I wondered. But probably not. Probably it is just part of the grand scheme of things, where not every living being that sprouts or is conceived gets to make it past the very earliest stages. Being culled out is part of the system. Redundancy and wasted life are part of the grand design. There are so many, because not all are expected to make it. And still, despite it all, some do survive! I am glad of that.

I was very grateful to have Sword home for Mother's Day, and Bow enjoyed the gifts she brought, too.

How they both have grown! Soon a new Audible and Kindle version of When Sword Met Bow will be coming out, read by Kelly Clear. My time for raising babies is done, but this book can help the families that are just starting out to introduce a new baby to older siblings. .

When Sword Met Bow -- Order Here

My other children's book, Ping and the Snirkelly People will also soon be out, read by Evelyn Adams. It describes the process of acquiring a second language by total immersion.

Ping and the Snirkelly People -- Order Here

However, on most days right here in and around the pens, life unfolds more like my third children's book, In Case There's a Fox. Through daily walks I encounter various animals, and they don't always tell me what they are up to. I can ask the rabbits to let me now what the turtles are doing, but until I look down and notice the turtles, the rabbits will keep mum.

On May 15, I spotted a couple of rabbits behind the garage and moved in closer to take a look.

As I drew closer, one of the rabbits ran away, but I kept my focus on the other rabbit, still oblivious of the indistinct rock-like thing in the grass by the fence.

Would you believe that, even at this distance, I was so focused on the rabbit that I had no ideas there were turtles in the picture? The rabbit stood very still. I wonder what it was thinking. I'm guessing it knew all about the turtles in plain sight.

I kept coming in closer to get a better look at the rabbit, and it kept holding its ground, until the moment when it ran off. Then I noticed there were two turtles at my feet!

I've never seen anything quite like it. But it's not going into any children's book.

My friend, Pam Keyes. who is an expert on turtles, told me that the female of the pair is at least sixty years old. Male turtles prefer older females to mate with, because their offspring have a better chance to survive. We recognize this particular female by the BB gun hole in her shell.. I have decided to call her Beebee.

Later that day, I saw Beebee just outside the fence. I thought maybe she was scouting locations to lay her eggs. But it was a bit early for that yet.

The sagas of box turtles in love and rabbits keeping their secrets are mostly for my own amusement. For the regular viewers of my channel, Bow is the only star attraction. Our most popular video for this month was the one from May 18 of Bow grooming me, but stopping short of picking my nose, when I asked.

In the Missouri Ozarks, May is part of the rainy season. It rains day after day sometimes, and the lush vegetation is richer for it. It's not such a bad way of life. But Bow prefers that it never rain, so he can go sunbathing in the outer pen. Lately, though, he has been taking the weather mostly in his stride.

For several days it rained, with brief periods of respite in between  The video above is from May 19, when Bow went out between rainstorms and displayed at the wind -- without setting foot on the wet floor of the pen! After the rain, there was a bit of flooding, and small rivulets of water crossed the internal road on my property to get to the other side.

Beebee the turtle found a conveniently wet spot to dig a nest for her eggs. And the armadillos came out to play. There were so many bugs for them to feast on!

Although I wanted to immediately sit down and to report on Beebee the box turtle, seeing all those armadillos that very same day over and over again kept me distracted.

But the armadillos disappeared, after putting in a full day of appearance on the May 21st, and by Memorial Day they were long forgotten. We did have a nice encounter with several butterflies, instead.

The best part of May is hanging out in the great outdoors. And Bow, more than anyone else, knows how to hang out. He has it mastered!

Funding for Project Bow

Books for Children by Aya Katz

It's that time of year again. October is almost over.  After Halloween, there is always Thanksgiving. And after Thanksgiving there is Christmas. And after Christmas, taxes come due. First there are the property taxes. and later there is that whole business of the income tax.

Sword and Bow in 2002

People who make their living in sales find this season to be the busiest one of all. Sometimes they put everything else on hold until it is over, because during this season they can make enough money to finance the whole rest of their year.

At Project Bow, we also hope for that kind of income. And no, we are not a "nonprofit". Why not? Because we want to maintain our first amendment rights to speak out against those who would do us harm. If we were a nonprofit, then there would be many things I would not be allowed to talk about.

Campaigning for a presidential candidate, which is something I have done this year, would not be allowed. But there are many other things that I would  not be able to say and do, including lobbying my local and state and Federal representatives not to pass anti-primate legislation. I would not be allowed to speak out against US Fish & Wildlife and their funding of the Jane Goodall Foundation with our tax money. I would be silenced. And for what, a few measly tax dollars? Why should I sell my soul for that? Why should anyone?

Other Books published by Inverted-A Press 

So when you buy books from Inverted-A, books that I wrote and that will help fund Project Bow, or books that I edited and published but did not write, you are not going to get a tax write off for the purchase. I, in turn, will not be able to take in that income,  tax exempt. I will have to pay the IRS for my right of free speech. It isn't right that they should tax free speech, but I would rather pay the tax than give up my first amendment rights.

Because I am willing to pay those taxes now, I can campaign for a presidential candidate whose platform includes doing away with the IRS, so that not only non-profit organizations but every single citizen can have tax free income. To me, that makes the whole thing worthwhile. If you agree, and you would like to make a contribution to Project Bow, please buy books that I have written and/or published as Christmas presents for friends and family on your list. It isn't tax exempt, but it's worth every penny, because what you are buying is freedom.

Books for Adults by Aya Katz