2024-02-05

Western Monarch Day 2024

Like the honeybees and the bumblebees the butterflies are a focus of my attention in these days of stupid county employees "accidentally" spraying them with malathion. There should be legislated protection for these species left to the ineptitude of some Dorchester county moron let loose with chemical weapons designed to kill them — but there isn't.

    Western Monarch Butterfly
Today is Western Monarch Day. Each February 5 we witness the return of the Western Monarchs to California marking some 3000 miles traversed from various parts of the Western US. When I was a resident of California this was a more important part of my yearly observations.

Now, being the deep south denizen I remain since then not so much.

The season of butterfly migration should be signficant to more than it is, but I lost that battle long ago when I gave up being a personal spokesman for those species which cannot speak for themselves.

Suffice it to say the diminishing numbers of the monarch butterfly should be sufficiently alarming to many but I fear most simply ignore the facts and on top of that do not care. Their numbers have dipped some 90 percent. I will personally mourn their eventual extinction.