By Susan DeGrane
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A school social worker, Haynes has helped raise nearly 600 monarch eggs and caterpillars in the last decade. With its orange and black markings, the monarch (Danaus plexippus) is among the most widely known butterflies; it lives in the city or the country, wherever milkweed grows, though it migrates to warmer regions for the winter. Unfortunately, global warming has caused severe weather changes and unusually cold weather in Mexico, one of the monarch’s winter habitats. Urban sprawl is eliminating areas where the native prairie plant is allowed to grow, and pesticides and lawn-care treatments kill the monarch. Recent studies indicate that monarch caterpillars are killed by pollen from corn that’s been genetically engineered to survive the corn-borer moth.
Haynes rises early and checks several prime locations: near the Metra station on 91st, on 101st near Saint Barnabas School, around the edges of the Edna White Century Garden at 111th and Homewood. In a notebook she records when and where the eggs and caterpillars are found, when each egg hatches, when each caterpillar enters the chrysalis stage, and when and in what stage the developing monarchs are placed with families. The glass jars holding the creatures are labeled with the same information, and Haynes provides her caretakers with detailed instructions and her phone number. So far this summer she’s enlisted 43 families in her mission–44 including mine.
Haynes places the monarchs with friends, neighbors, and fellow churchgoers. “You really can see the gold on the chrysalis,” she told seven-year-old Rosa Gallagher one Sunday morning, after a service at Beverly Unitarian Church. “The dots look like 14-karat.” Rosa’s father, Ed, agreed to take four caterpillars and two chrysalides for Rosa and her nine-year-old brother, Lukas. “Fortunately,” he joked, “the place we live in has every species of plant native to Illinois.”
