The state park we camped at offered a variety of activities, and on Saturday there was "Monarch butterfly tagging" offered at the trail center. This is exactly the kind of thing the girls get excited about, so I brought them over to check it out. Turns out that this state park partners with the University of Kansas to tag Monarchs and track their migratory patterns to Mexico. It began with the DNR lady doing a little talk about the Monarch butterfly.
Now, I should mention here that Cecilia is a serious nature-lover, and she's watched more than her fair share of nature programming on PBS, in addition to receiving various nature magazines for children over the years. And she is a voracious reader of pretty much anything. So then.
The DNR lady incorporated a number of questions for the audience in her presentation, and Cecilia - without exception - answered every single one of them (she raised her hand first, of course). Life cycle of the Monarch? She knew it. What do they eat? Why, milkweed of course! How long do they live? Where do the migrate to? What's the difference between a chrysalis and a cocoon? She answered all of these correctly, much to the surprise and amusement of all the adults in attendance. At one point an older gentleman said, "Maybe she should be the one giving the presentation!" And then, after the DNR lady handed out the butterfly nets and encouraged everyone to move quietly and carefully through the prairie, all the kids took off like bats out of hell, tearing through the prairie and wildly swinging their butterfly nets. But not my Cecilia, oh no. She moved stealthily along the edge of the pine trees where the forest met the prairie, following the instructions to a tee.
Want to guess who came back with the first Monarch in their net?
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| Fishing in the St. Croix river. |
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