Four Wings and a Prayer by Sue Halpern

Author:Sue Halpern [Halpern, Sue]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-36380-0
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2002-07-08T16:00:00+00:00

LATE FALL AND early winter were always a quiet time on D-Plex. It was as if the participants, like the butterflies, were in a state of creative diapause, conserving their thoughts and attention for the remigration a few months off. The excitement of being part of the long-distance relay race as the monarchs swept south from Canada to Mexico was, for the time being, over. In October 1997 there were some three hundred messages on D-Plex. The next month there were only about a hundred. It was the same in December. Don Davis offered his “Odds and Ends” a few times, and there was the usual chatter: discussions about monarchs in Florida and tips on buying milkweed at Home Depot and a message from someone in Warsaw alerting everyone to a movie on monarchs that would be airing on Polish TV.

From Mexico, however, almost nothing was heard, and almost no one was writing about what was going on there, either. It was as if the butterflies, having reached their winter home, were now safely in their beds, asleep, and not to be disturbed. But that, of course, was not at all what was happening. Although their metabolisms had slowed, and though their reproductive systems were temporarily shut off, the monarchs were not hibernating. They spent a surprising amount of time in the air, playing what looked like a child’s game: sunbathing in the trees until a cloud drew a curtain on that warmth, then rushing madly skyward, flapping. The sound of their wings was startling then, like spontaneous clapping. It erupted, and arced, and fell away. Most of the time, though, the monarchs were huddled on tree trunks and branches, one upon the next until the bark was no longer visible. They were waiting: waiting for the days to lengthen, for the temperature to rise, for their biological clocks to start ticking loudly again.

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