I spent most of the weekend trying to keep my body from involuntarily curling up into a fetal position. Oh. my. God. Saturday morning I somehow managed to uncurl myself and get upright, but I can tell you this — racing around in a hot field wielding a butterfly net high in the air over your head is tough to do when your abs have revolted.
I’ll let that image soak into your brain for a sec. Makes me sound like a weirdo, doesn’t it?
Saturday morning I promised Spawn that we’d participate in the Monarch Migration Mystery program offered by our local state park. If you don’t know, Monarch butterflies migrate south to Mexico for the winter and return north in the spring. Our area is right in the flight path. The MMM program enlists regular citizens (and eco-geeks and those with young kids who like bugs) to catch the Monarchs and tag them and record data about them so that scientists can study their migration patterns.
The tagging site is located about ten miles from the edge of civilization, which is to say, at the edge of the earth. It’s in the river bottoms, where no human lives because the river bottoms tend to flood a lot. The area is a federally managed wildlife refuge, so at least the roads are mostly blacktopped. Mostly. Lots of cropland out that way. Cell phone service is spotty at best out there, and if you are a modern human the thought of not getting a signal out in the middle of the boonies is a bit disconcerting. Especially since down in the river bottoms there are things like poisonous snakes. I hate to admit it but it’s been so long since I was out tromping around in the fields in the sticks that I was a little nervous about being unplugged for the bulk of the morning. But since there were about 30 of us lost in the tall weeds at least we had the safety of numbers.
Also, it was hot. And we had to wear long pants and lace-up shoes. So yes, we were hot. And the weeds, they were indeed tall. As a kid I was used to having weeds taller than me, but as an adult having weeds taller than me made me feel pretty alone. I told Spawn that if we got separated to hold the butterfly net up high so I could reorient myself and get us back together. Last thing I wanted was for the Creature From the Black Lagoon to snatch up my kid.
Last years’ MMM program tagged over 300 butterflies over the span of two weekends. I think this year there will be considerably fewer tagged, because Spawn and I only caught two untagged. And we were out there for two hours. Several of the others had about the same luck. I caught the same butterfly at least twice, one that was already tagged.
Someone found a turtle. A turtle is high on Spawn’s list of Pets To Have, and I could see the wheels turning in the kid’s head of just how to convince me that we should take it home. But we were on federal property, and that would have been illegal. So I explained for the umpteenth time that a wild creature should stay in the wild because that is its’ home. And we took the turtle over to the treeline where there was some good vegetation cover and a water source, and it took me ten minutes to convince Spawn that the turtle wasn’t going to come out of its’ shell until we were gone.
As a kid, I had a turtle. His name was George. He was not an exciting pet. But a turtle is a lot less work than, say, a dog, which is another animal that is on Spawn’s list. As is a hedgehog. And a snake (oh hell no). And a hermit crab. And a lizard. Seven cats are just not enough. And while I wouldn’t really mind too much indulging my kid in having this sort of menagerie (minus the snake, obvs), I am also quite well aware that the bulk of the responsibility would fall to me and quite frankly I do not have the time to feed and care for all of those critters.
Anyway.
The MMM program records where the tagged butterflies end up and the ones that make it all the way to Mexico earn an official certificate for the person who captured and tagged them. I don’t hold out a lot of hope that the two we caught will make it all the way to Michoacán but if they do what a cool thing for the kid to learn.
And in the meantime I am holding myself upright at all times. I am afraid that if I start to slump I will curl up and never be able to look the world in the eye again. And yes, I plan on abusing my abs again this week in the same class. No pain, no gain.
— Mox
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