Meeting the Monarch Caterpillar

Yesterday was a red letter day. I finally saw a monarch caterpillar with my very own eyes. My iPhone summarized the day in a short video.

For the majority of my YouTube following, it is the cozy moments with Bow that matter the most. Grooming together out in the sun is certainly a pleasant experience.

But because that is an everyday occurrence for me, I suppose I underplay it, whereas it is those rare glimpses of a butterfly or a moth that have me all a-flutter. For instance, on June 2nd, I spotted what seemed like a leaf, but it was moving in a way that made it seem alive

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 I drew closer, and it turned out to be a very damaged polyphemus moth.

It was so fragile, so damaged and yet so beautiful!

So I posted the video on YouTube, because I thought it was exciting and poignant and rare, and I got eight views.  Eight views! But my last grooming video got over a thousand views. And for a moment I kind of felt as if my viewers were shallow. But then I realized: I'm lucky to have a personal relationship with Bow, and so I take it for granted. And there are so many people out there who are starving for contact with nonhuman apes. So it makes sense that for them Bow grooming me is the rare and wonderful thing. And I do value the contact with Bow, too. It's just that I am also amazed by the wildlife all around me. That's another gift that Project Bow has given me. I never saw so many butterflies until I was trapped here, with no hope of escape, just the way Bow is. It's when you can't go anywhere else that the true story all around you starts to unfold. 

And then there is the saga of the milkweed plants and the monarch butterflies. Last year I watched one milkweed plant as it went from closed buds to full bloom, and the next day it was gone. It took so very long to bloom, but I never saw a butterfly on it. Not once! And it was probably a deer that ate it. 

This year, everything has happened much faster. The first floret opened on June 2nd, and I almost did not notice it, because it was hidden under a leaf.

That evening there was a violent rainstorm. I went out the next morning to look at the purple milkweed, not knowing what I would find. And there it was!

They're supposed to be eating the leaves, not the flowers. But I would recognize it anywhere, even though I had never seen one in person before. It was a monarch caterpillar! A creature out of mythic past -- from a book I had read in first grade, when my reading ability exceeded my grasp of English!

Earlier this year I rediscovered the book, The Travels of Monarch X, and I read it to Bow.

Bow wasn't very interested, but that's okay, because when I first read that book, I wasn't very interested, either.  I wanted to grow up to be a giant gorilla, and I didn't care much about invertebrates. The story of how I learned English by total immersion in first grade is fictionalized in my children's book, Ping and the Snirkelly People. It is coming out at the end of the month on Audible, read by Evelyn Adams.

Order it now

Anyway, I was so excited yesterday to see my first monarch caterpillar that I took many photos of it.

But by the time I got back to the purple milkweed patch that afternoon, the caterpillar was long gone. I did see a beautiful eastern tailed-blue on the half open blossoms of another of the purple milkweed plants.

I incorporated both the butterfly and the caterpillar in a video that featured plenty of grooming, because you have to give the people what they want.

It's not that I don't enjoy being groomed, mind you. It always feels nice.

It's just that there are also other pleasures in life. And I enjoy sharing those as well.

Part Versus Whole

When Bow eats an apple, he eats the whole apple.

There is no differentiating core from outer layer.

There is no concern over seeds or less tasty fibers.

Bow likes to examine every part of the apple, to see what is there, but when it gets small enough to slip it into his mouth, he does so, and the apple disappears.

There is only one part of the apple that Bow does not eat: the stem.

When he is done with the apple, Bow hands me the stem.

To many, the apple can be divided into slices and eaten in parts, or even shared among friends. But a little apple is too small for Bow to subdivide. Portion size will vary.

To most of us, the milkweed flower is an indivisible whole, a poof of color in an otherwise drab field.

But to the bee, the contents of each individual floret of which the  complex flower consists is the meal being attacked.

The bee can visit more than one floret per feeding, but it can't possibly finish harvesting the contents the whole flower. And this is true even though the bee is bringing food home to the hive, and not consuming it all on the spot.

I have stood there and watched a bee flit from one floret to the next.

But as many times as it comes in for that landing, it still cannot cover the entire flower.

There is enough food in a single milkweed flower for a whole hive full of bees.

One size does not fit all, and the portions you purchase or consume are an individual matter. But there is a movement afoot among government officials to suggest that portion size is something that is immutable and dictated from above.

A couple of recent items made me think of that. One was a picture of a school assignment, in which a math problem was posed: "Luis ate 2/3 of his pizza and Marty ate 1/2 of his, but Marty ate more pizza that Luis. How is that possible?" In a childish handwriting, the student replied: "Marty's pizza was bigger." Then in a green marker, an adult -- presumably the teacher -- wrote: "That is incorrect. Marty could not have eaten more pizza, because 2/3 is always more than 1/2."

Now I don't know if this was a real example of a teacher/student interaction or a hoax, but it would not surprise me if there are teachers who don't realize that pizzas can vary in size. We are fast approaching a world where everything is standardized,  and portions are set by the government.

Then there are officials who want to ban super-sized sodas on the ground that they are "not healthy", but if you want to drink that much, you should have to buy two regular sodas. Or the federal regulator who forbade a manufacturer from labeling a low carb snack bar as "healthy" because it had "too many calories."

Portion size varies. How much of anything you eat also varies. How much you need to eat varies. How do the regulators know if the soda or the snack bar are going to be shared with a friend or not? How do they know you won't save some for later? Do they know how big you are or high your metabolism? They don't! It varies.

My daughter and I regularly ask for doggy bags every time we eat out. Yes, restaurant portions seem to be designed for people at least twice our size. But this does not upset us or cause us to waste the food or eat until we burst. We just have the other half the next day, and it makes the meal more economical.

Even a bee knows when it has had enough, and their food is loaded with sugar! Why on earth do they assume portion control is something individual humans cannot manage?