Miracle in a jar

     It was about an inch long, bullet-shaped and a leafy shade of green, roped with sparkling gold rings that my nieces would call “bling.”
     “A chrysalis,” Rick pronounced. The hard-shelled pupa of a moth.
     So, like two 7-year-olds undertaking a science project, we did something I have never done: We put it in a jar with a twig and few leaves, poked holes in the top and waited.
     We didn’t have to wait long. Less than a week later, Rick said he could start to see orange and white stripes appearing inside the translucent shell.  On Monday, there appeared before us a monarch butterfly, full grown and moving its wings uncertainly.
     We named it Harantis, after our street.
     Yesterday, before work, in a driving rain, we took the jar outside and gently deposited its contents on top of a tarp inside our open garage. I took one last picture and left.
     I was still at work in the late afternoon when Rick called.
     “Harantis is gone,” he said, and I swear I thought he was going to cry. “Off to Mexico.”
     And here is the magical part.
     Monarchs are the only butterfly that migrates both north and south, like birds do (though no individual one makes the entire trip, females depositing eggs for the next generation to continue the journey).
     By the end of October, Harantis will indeed be well on the way to Mexico, likely the Mariposa Monarca Biosphere Reserve.
     That little inch-long thing we found on a plastic lawn chair in our yard is an intercontinental flyer.
     Who says we don’t encounter miracles every day?