Mariposa

Further reading elicits the known but long-forgotten information that monarch butterflies are disagreeable to predators, perhaps even mildly poisonous; other creatures, therefore, even mimic their appearance. Our butterfly is female. From time to time she moved from one spot to another on the milkweed stalk. At intervals of thirty minutes or so we looked at her. Late in the afternoon she was not where she had been. She must have gone when the intermittent misty precipitation ended. At the time that we found her gone, late in the afternoon, seen in the yard were a giant clouded sulphur and also a zebra longwing.