r/MonarchButterfly

Mini emerged from her chrysalis on September 26th. Her wings looked completely normal and healthy. Once her wings were hardened, I took her out of the cage to tag, measure, and release her like I’ve done 300 times so far this year. I noticed that when I took her out, one side of her wings seemed off, like she couldn’t move it properly but I thought nothing of it at the time. I tagged, and measured her forewing at 53mm long.

When I tried to release her though, she attempted to fly away but nosedived into the ground over and over and over. To analyze what was wrong with her, I tossed her into the air to try and get her to fly. I noticed that she wasn’t moving the right side of her wings at all. She couldn’t flap that side.

I had never seen anything like this, her wing muscles seemed paralyzed on the right side. I tested her for OE, she didn’t have it. I thought maybe she just needed more time to warm them up, so I left her on a goldenrod flower in my garden and wished her luck.

On September 29th, curiosity got the best of me and I went to go see if she had flown away. I found her on the grass near the goldenrod. She was extremely skinny and starving. She must’ve tried to fly away but flew into the ground again. I brought her inside and offered her sugar water, which she promptly drank for 5 minutes straight 🥹. I decided I would keep her as a pet until the end of her life because she couldn’t fly and feed herself.

I set her up a little cage with sticks and flower cuttings to climb on and fruit and sugar water for her to eat. Food was always available to her, but I would manually feed her every few
hours to make sure she was eating. Her favourite food was sugar water.

For the next few days we hung out together. I would let her crawl all over me and she would watch me study and watch movies. She would climb around and flutter her wings and sunbathe under my lamp on the cloudy days. She would also attempt to fly, but would still fly straight into the ground. I did notice a little bit of improvement in her range of motion of her wings, but she still couldn’t fly.

On October 2nd though, I noticed that she started to fly short distances with some accuracy. She could fly from her cage, to me, to my bed. She was actually flapping the right side of her wings!She still wasn’t generating enough lift though and would fly downwards but it was way better than it was.

On October 3rd, she flew across my entire room and it looked like a completely normal flight of a butterfly. I was ecstatic! Mini could fly! I excitedly took her outside to see if she could fly away. And she did! She flew higher and farther until me and my mom couldn’t see her anymore 🥹. She could finally fly and migrate like a normal butterfly should. I am so proud of her and im wishing her the best of luck.

I hypothesize that her wing muscle on the right side was for some reason paralyzed and by fluttering and attempting to fly every day, she
slowly gained the ability to use that wing. I’m glad I housed her while she recovered and gave her ample food so she was able to heal.

Is it normal for monarchs to lay eggs this late in the season? This is located in west Texas on the edge of the Chihuahuan desert in the Llano Estacado region. I noticed these on a tomato plant that grew from a rogue seed in the middle of my milkweed patch. The milkweeds are western whorled (Asclepias subverticillata) which I grew from seeds locally gathered.