'Ooooo! Ahhhh!' was the chorus as wings fluttered skyward. Cheryl is the shy one, she said, and 'Brainiac is really smart.' Holly Felker, 10, toted a camera to snap the monarchs, which she had named and could tell apart. 'It sounds like fun.'įinally, the big moment for the children - and the 26 butterflies - arrived outside in the butterfly garden. 'I want to go to a Day of the Dead party,' said Brittany Miller, 11, who also wants to visit Mexico. And he said he had told his mother stuff about her native Mexico that she hadn't known.

Kevin Diaz, 10, was amazed to learn that butterflies have scales. 'I thought it was cool that they could taste with their feet,' said Jacob Uscilowski, 10. The butterflies' bold colors warn predators that they've acquired their former diet's properties.īut Conaway's students already know that - and more. Milkweed is noxious to many birds, so it protects the eggs and, later, the caterpillars, Conaway said. When those butterflies emerge, they fly north to repeat the life cycle.

In late February, they are again on the move, and by late March, they're back in Texas and Oklahoma, laying their eggs in milkweed, said Chip Taylor, director of the University of Kansas' Monarch Watch project. These monarchs fly south 2,000 or more miles (by early October, they had reached Texas) to quietly pass the winter in the oyamel trees of Mexico's heartland. 'They just say no, and instead of living three to five weeks, they live eight months.' 'A genetic switch slips, and instead of being interested in sex, they're just interested in travel,' said the monarch network's Mollenhauer. While most live only weeks, intent on reproducing, monarchs that emerge from their chrysalises in mid- or late August are born to greater things. My husband said, 'You're going to be arrested.' ' 'I've gone on private property to get it. Spanish teacher Marilyn Appel has her students paint paper butterflies and mails them to youngsters in Mexico, hoping they'll write back.Īnd Cheryl Tartaglione, the special-education teacher in Conaway's classroom, calls herself 'a milkweed freak.' Jennifer Versak-Kennedy raises monarchs in her classroom to inspire her art classes. Since taking the course seven years ago, she has made monarchs an ever larger part of her curriculum. Seeing a brochure for the Monarch Teacher Network, she thought, 'How cool.' She keeps a butterfly garden at her home driving, she brakes for milkweed, the plant on which monarchs lay their eggs and the caterpillars feed she hand-feeds the butterflies born in her class to make sure they eat and she wears monarch earrings and a necklace shaped like a green monarch chrysalis, right down to the golden flecks.ĭespite growing up in downtown Glassboro, Conaway, the wife of a pastor and mother of two college-age kids, had a thing for birds - until she saw rats running up her bird feeder. Conaway's passion transcends the academic.

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