Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship, in partnership with Vermont Public
BURLINGTON — Donna Bister raises Monarch butterflies from her living room in Burlington’s Old North End. She started a decade ago, when she heard Monarch populations were in decline.
Today, the orange and black insect is doing better, and this year will be Bister’s final caterpillar hatch. She talked about it with Community News Service producer Danny Keibler.
Donna Bister: It’s farming, really. You know, you have to feed them twice a day, and you have to clean their enclosure twice a day, and you have to be alert for when they’re making their chrysalis, so you don’t interrupt that process.
I mean, I just found a hatched out chrysalis attached to the wall in the hallway this morning, and I thought, ‘How’d that butterfly get out there?‘
I’m Donna Bister and I raise Monarch butterflies in the hopes of making a little more color and delight in the world.
My caterpillar farm is in my front hallway, and I grow the milkweed out here in the garden by the side of the house. We planted it quite a while ago, but it comes back every year, very late in the season, so it’s easy to think that it’s not gonna come up again, but it always does.
We actually planted milkweed so that I wouldn’t have to go foraging. They eat a lot. So, start with one or two, because you need a big leaf or two for each caterpillar.
I don’t exactly remember why we started doing it. Probably had something to do with hearing that the Monarch — the numbers of Monarchs were so low, and finding out that, you know, the survival rate of Monarch caterpillars in the wild is not very high, actually.
There’s a woman in Pennsylvania who raises caterpillars for people who want to do this. And she’s got a very clean operation, and she follows all of the — you know, don’t interbreed your caterpillars, and all that stuff, because there are real concerns about people raising butterflies and letting them out in the wild.
If you’re getting caterpillars from someone who only has a small gene pool, then you can decrease the diversity of the world. And that’s not the point. But she doesn’t do that.
She’s very good, and she sends the caterpillars in the mail, which is — sometimes freaks out the post office. Depends on who’s delivering. When you get— it’s a little tiny box, and it says “live caterpillars” on it.
Started in 2016, so this’ll be the tenth year, and this year, unfortunately, will probably be the last, because my caterpillar supplier is going to sell her business and retire, and I haven’t found a new person.
I don’t think I set out to gain anything from it. It was just some little thing that I could do to make something better, that needed a little bit of betterment.