No humans were captured, tagged or harmed in the recounting of this tale. All humans engaging in their odd bipedal mating rituals were of physical maturity for their species. I am told that is eighteen years, an astonishing seventy-two generations of butterflies.
***
West Texas, 1978
"There it is, right up ahead." Maria Luisa said to her sister Isabela.
"Are you sure."
"Exactly 34,546,432,821 flaps from Memorial Circle on campus."
"Oh aren't we big, 'on campus,' what are we now a Red Raider?"
"I did study Circadian Navigation at Texas Tech."
"No," Isabella said. "You studied Circadian Navigation using Genetic Memory in your pupae while it was attached to a tree by the outdoor track at Texas Tech University; after you got really fat."
"Fat, who are you calling fat. I seem to recall this annoying little green caterpillar that weighed nearly a gram."
"Yes, well look at us now, yellow and orange and black with fashionable white dots," said Maria Luisa.
The sisters landed side by side on two of the delicate twigs nestled among the branches in one of the trees behind a white clapboard garage.
Maria Luisa spoke. "This is definitely the place Elisabeth Farnese spoke of, Isabella."
"Great-great-grandmother?"
"Yes, I have all of her memories. This is where she observed the odd mating rituals of the humans down there in the swimming pool last year," said Maria Luisa.
"You remember the most inane dross. What we should be doing is finding a couple nice little branches near some flowers and waiting for Charles the Third and Philip the Fifth."
"They will find us here," said Maria Luisa.
"Is that her in the light blue?" Isabela asked about the girl playing with her two younger brothers in the pool.
"No... That one, she is not ready yet, we are looking for the one with four red triangles."
"Human markings are strange," said Isabela, "but sometimes beautiful."
"Look at the way she stares at us," said Maria Luisa, referring to the human female in blue.
"Wow," said Isabela."
"Yes, I can see it in her eyes, she wants to fly like we do."
"Is that them?" Isabela asked, referring to the male in brown entering the pool with a female with four red triangles.
"Well now... No... Not exactly, the male last year was different," said Maria Luisa, "but the female is the same."
"Different mates? Such perversites are born when you live beyond your second season."
"Eleanor, our grandmother, was not a pervert, nor will our larvae be," said Maria Luisa.
"Third season, better?"
"Much better."
"Do you think they will mate, the humans?" Asked Isabela.
"Possibly, I hear tell humans often have multiple sequential mates," said Maria Luisa.
"Ewww, to mate more than one time; human mating is gross."
"It's just different, not gross. Try to have an open mind," said Maria Luisa.
"But for us Monarchs," said Isabela, "our one time is literally everything to us."
"That it is," said Maria Luisa, "but we can watch the humans while we wait for our suitors to arrive. That patch of milkweed beside our tree is calling them right now."
"Where is the other male?" Asked Isabela. "The one from last year that you called Punch."
"I do not know, the one in brown is the male called George. The female in light blue is his sister Lisa. The female with black triangles is his sister Jamie. The female with four red triangles, the one that was the other males mate last year, they call her Wendy."
"How complicated," said Isabella.
"Humans don't just connect with one another to reproduce," said Maria Luisa. "They couple for many reasons. Even just for pleasure."
"But how do they survive as a species having only one offspring at a time and with not every joining leading to an offspring; mom had two-hundred-thirty-six of us?" Isabella asked.
"I don't think that is an issue, I think humans will be fine unless they decide to kill one other first. Our future is likely more tenuous than theirs." said Maria Luisa. "Maybe the one called Punch flew away, there was talk of him going to Austin last year."
"Humans cannot fly."
"No, they cannot fly unaided like we can. The one last year, Punch, his father owns something called a Stinson, a flying contraption. He took the girl in blue, Lisa, for a ride in it once."
"Humans actually flying, in contraptions they make, will wonders never cease."
A human contraption arrived, Isabela had not been paying attention to its approach, but she did not believe it had been flying. She thought it rolled. Two humans emerged from within it.
"Isabela, there is the male human from last year. He has changed his markings; now he is white atop blue."
"Do you think he has a new mate? There is a female with him," asked Isabela.
"I think so, look at the way he holds the female with the yellow markings."
"To change one's markings at all, let alone several times in a day is just bizarre."
"Yes, it must be a form of camouflage," Maria Luisa said.
The two females in blue and black and the two adolescent males who were wet from the water went inside of the human dwelling. Shortly, they emerged dry and with different and more extensive markings. The eight humans spoke in their annoyingly loud dialect, and then all but the two that we hoped would mate in front of us left in their strange conveyance. It rolled way.
