I found the butterfly in the third week of November, as Thanksgiving approached and the weather was becoming cold.
The distinctive orange and black markings of the monarch, attached to the grey stucco side of a store, made it easy to spot. I put my finger in front of the butterfly to let it climb aboard. We took it home and set it in a potted plant in the kitchen window seat.
The butterfly seemed perfectly intact but had a hard time walking. It lurched around slowly like its wings were an intolerable burden, finally settling down for the night when we turned the lights off.
The next day, I searched the Internet for what to feed butterflies. Apparently they like a mix of 10 percent sugar and 90 percent water, boiled and then cooled. It's only the monarch caterpillars that have to have milkweed leaves to eat; the adults usually get their dinner from flowers.
I wasn't sure how to present this food without the clumsy monarch falling into it, until my partner in butterfly rescue suggested using the empty hummingbird feeder. I filled the feeder and tilted it forward so the juice was at the top of one of the little plastic flowers. I laid a paintbrush in front of the flower as a platform. Sure enough, once I got the insect and the feeder close enough together, the monarch eagerly unrolled its hollow tongue and tapped it around like a flexible cane until it hit the sweet solution.
I started worrying about when to let the butterfly go. Would we have to entertain it for the entire winter? Going back to Google, I found that by mid-November a monarch should be hanging out with tens of thousands of buddies in Mexico, not alone in Blacksburg. There's no way it could make it to Mexico now; it's too cold, too late.
Monarchs are one of the few types of butterfly that migrates. The tiny creatures have great fortitude and patience. They travel south and stay in great numbers in the central mountains of Mexico until spring and then head back for wherever they came from, as far north as Canada. This particular butterfly probably wouldn't have made it back to Virginia in the spring, even if it had gotten to Mexico. The returning butterfly would more likely be this butterfly's offspring, from spring eggs laid somewhere between Mexico and its northern home. Somehow the next generation knows where to go.
I'm relieved to find that when the monarchs get to Mexico, the cooler temperatures make them dormant until spring. They don't eat or drink or move around much. What we really needed to do with our butterfly was to leave it alone and let it sleep until spring. If we kept it awake, it might die.
The pictures of wintering monarchs are amazing. The monarchs are more numerous than leaves on the trees, and apparently the sound of their wings is quite loud. There are, of course, tourist expeditions to visit them. The daytime temperature there is 50 to 55 degrees. It can get down in the 30s at night. Temperatures are not usually freezing, but in January 2002, a winter storm lowered the temperature enough to kill 80 percent of wintering monarchs.
I found that certain spots on my butterfly's lower wings mean he's a male. He should be all right in our house, and we can let him go in the spring. We cut some pine limbs for him to sit on, and put him in a room that stays cool but doesn't freeze.
"How can you tell if he's alive?" my partner asked. "You can't," I answered. "We'll just have to leave him alone and wait." In the meantime, I'll send off for some milkweed seeds and start planning for spring.
Pris Sears grew up in Florida, lives in Blacksburg and works among Virginia Tech's computers.