New England, Texas, Mexico

Observe these two monarchs of 2010...
The first one encountered in my mothers garden in Western Massachusetts, the second in Central Texas.

Perhaps they'll meet this winter in Mexico.

The monarchs always calm me. They have a way of making great distances seem very small. Seeing this one in Texas made me feel closer to the gardens back home, the gardens in Chicago, even the butterfly mountains of Mexico which I had the luck to climb once as a teenager.

It was good to meet these new friends this year especially. Like the honeybee there has been recent talk of the destruction of the Monarch. In the case of the butterflies this is due to last year's inclement weather and heavy illegal logging in their Mexican mountain homes. Meeting them in such divergent parts of the country gave me hope that they may rebound and surround us again in vast numbers.

Speaking of vast numbers, I'm afraid this may be the last post I put up for a little while. It seems I have filled up all the photo memory allowed me for this blog. In fact, I had to erase some other personal pictures just to fit these last two photos up here. I must now either buy more memory or find some other way of supplying top quality animal photography to fans of Creature Comforts. Either way I'm sure it wont take long.

Until then, Keep Comfortable,

MJB

UPDATE: Picture two is, apparently, not a Monarch at all but a Viceroy. A fact that ruins the entire theme of my post. Guess it's back to the old drawing board.