Cynthia Burnson.
Chili Dog was spotted in Olbrich Botanical Gardens in October.
He was resting on a purple coneflower, fanning his wings, when the observers got close enough to note the alphanumeric code on his sticker. Chili Dog had flown across the street from Lowell Elementary after his release three days earlier. Next on his itinerary, with fair weather and unbelievable good fortune: El Rosario, Mexico.
Chili Dog was one of two monarch butterflies my son’s third grade class had raised and named that year. Charlotte was the other. Every year I gather a clipboard, a record-keeping page, and a sheet of stickers, each about the size of one you’d find stuck on a banana. The fine teachers at Lowell allow me a few minutes to tag the butterflies they’ve been raising and tell the kids the little I know about monarchs.
I ask the class questions while I set up my gear. I’m a sucker for third-graders raising their hands so high they’re lifting themselves out of their own chairs. Does anyone know what “migration” means? Who has been to Texas or Mexico? Who can guess what percent of tagged butterflies are recovered in Mexico in early spring? (this one feels cruel — the guesses come and I point downwards over and over — it’s about one in a hundred).
The kids have questions for me too: No, the stickers don’t have chips in them that make the monarchs trackable in real time on some giant control center screen (cool idea though!). No, sadly, the mom butterflies do not go on with their monarch children, they lay their eggs and pass away (slightly alarmed look from teacher here). No, it doesn’t hurt to put the sticker on (I’m not completely convinced of that one. I hope the science is worth it).
To buy myself a little time while I fumble with the butterfly and attach the sticker to the underside of the wing, I have the class chant the sticker code over and over so I can write it on the clipboard - “A - G - B - A - 9 - 0 - 6!” — a kind of citizen scientist pep rally.
Monarchs are both beguiling scientific mysteries and the most obvious of metaphors. I dream of monarchs when I’m changing jobs or taking a trip or experiencing transformation of any kind. My enchantment is tempered with a little embarrassment at the unoriginality of my subconscious. Enchantment wins out handily. Just because it’s common magic doesn’t mean it’s any less magic.
My yearly monarch routine starts in mid-summer. I peer under milkweed leaves across Madison and collect tiny conical off-white eggs. It’s the naturalist Pokemon Go — most people look at me funny in my crouch-in-a-ditch moment but some know exactly what I’m doing because they do it too.
I raise as many as I can find in a pop-up habitat with milkweed stalks sticking out of test tubes in an ancient blue rusty test tube rack I got at UW Swap. I’ve brought the caterpillars on vacation up north, I’ve gotten caterpillar babysitters when they can’t come along. I bike around with my net sticking out of my backpack in case I spot one in a community garden or by the side of the road. I hardly ever catch any — they are extremely wily — but I love to try. I tag the ones I raise, those I catch with a net, and the ones raised in the classrooms at Lowell.
At the end of the season, in about November, I submit all the information to a database maintained by MonarchWatch.org. Monarch Watch is run by the University of Kansas and has been promoting monarch success and science since 1992. You might know them by the butterfly habitat placards the organization provides to people who grow sufficiently butterfly-friendly yards. (Those people do not necessarily want you to capture and tag their butterflies. Ask me how I know.)
Each year, Monarch Watch sends out more than a quarter of a million tags to citizen scientists with nets and clipboards and optimism. Last year, they posted 52 tagged butterflies recovered in Mexico and 757 spotted somewhere along their journey. We monarch taggers are all about the long odds.
A quote from Cynthia Burnson's essay.
Sweaty in early August, I lean in close to watch my temporary pet. The striped black, white and yellow caterpillar chows a semicircle of the milkweed leaf left to right over and over. It has the satisfaction of a typewriter, or a cartoon character eating an ear of corn. Crunch crunch crunch crunch DING! Chug back to the start and do it again. You can practically see the caterpillar grow in real time.The single-minded drive is soothing. They have one instinct, one job, punctuated by periods of intense rest and transformation. What would it feel like, I wonder, to follow a rhythm so completely instead of my default bulldozer approach?
Did you know that caterpillars dissolve into an amorphous goo when they’re in the chrysalis? And that even after they reform into the shape of a butterfly, they retain memories of their caterpillar life?
If you classically condition the caterpillar to fear a smell, the adult maintains the same fear.
Did you know many monarchs must fly across Lake Superior, a journey so full of faith and peril that if they are lucky to spot a boat they quickly land for a rest, resulting in boats covered in monarchs? In the middle of Lake Superior, they veer for no obvious reason, leading some scientists to believe they are avoiding a mountain that has been gone for millennia.
The following May, after the migration is complete, I breathlessly pull up the recovery lists on MonarchWatch.org. Did Chili Dog make it? How about Charlotte or Ironman or Sparkles? Were they spotted on their month-long journey?
I hooted out loud when I saw Chili Dog’s number pop up.
Three people saw him at Olbrich Gardens within the week I had tagged him. They crouched forward to decode the little banana sticker on his wing, went home, and submitted their sighting to Monarch Watch. A message by monarch from one enthusiast to another.
In the recovery lists, submitters can add comments. Sometimes they read as captivating little poems or cryptic koans.
“It was very Big and Friendly.”
“Appeared to be the object of another monarch’s heart. Lol”
“On ground, deceased but looked healthy and good condition.”
Even though I know odds are long, I wilt a little each year when none of my emissaries make it to Mexico. Disappointment turns quickly to determination — my stickers will arrive in a few months and my clipboard and net sit by the front door. The 2026-2027 season has arrived and the monarchs are headed south.
Cynthia Burnson is a lifelong Madison eastsider who lives with her husband, middle school son, and two dogs. She plays in local band Hottt Probs and enjoys wandering the neighborhood looking for butterflies.
