Even as my son and I watched the newly emerged monarch take his first steps, we knew he was doomed. We’d brought inside a chubby caterpillar in mid-October, the day before a hard freeze, the last survivor amid the wasted milkweed in our yard. He had crawled around our houseplants for a couple days before forming a characteristic ‘J’. Two weeks later, a fresh and dripping male butterfly crawled out of a chrysalis and across our coffee table.

But the frost outside meant our home was his first and last stop as a monarch. It was too cold to fly, and would be until next May. “What do we do?” my son asked. “Well,” I said, “he’ll never make it to his ancestral forest in Mexico. Maybe we can give him a nice life up here, for at least a little while?” (We did debate sneaking him onto a southbound flight out of Portland airport.)

In the end, we drove His Highness to a local garden center’s tropical greenhouse. The last we saw of him, he was up to his proboscis in a hibiscus.

While we couldn’t ultimately save this butterfly, for a short time we felt like we were important to him. He certainly was to us. “Our” monarch experienced a little more life in this cold northern state, and my family had a mini wildlife adventure. 

The small choices we make every day might affect an animal friend, or our local neighborhood, or even the planet, but they always affect us.

As you can see in our year-end newsletter, the Wells Reserve at Laudholm is all about important choices too. One small choice you can make today would be to make a year-end gift of $30, $50, $100, $250, $500, $1000 – heck, why not a million – to the Wells Reserve through the Laudholm Trust. Your support means a lot to this center for science, education, and conservation. It would mean a lot to you too. You help choose the future of this place and we are grateful. 

Thank you, and happy holidays.

Sincerely,

Nik Charov, President
Laudholm Trust

2019 Annual Appeal