Another form of fixed-wing aircraft
A monarch butterfly has a chance at completing its species’ famed migration to central Mexico thanks to some tiny cardboard splints, a bit of contact cement and a trucker from Alabama.
About three weeks ago, Jeannette Brandt was out for a bike ride in rural Hadley, N.Y., when she spied the injured butterfly and took it home in her emptied water bottle.
She and her partner, Mike Parwana, fed it rotting pears and water mixed with honey from bees they keep.
The butterfly fattened, but the question remained: What about the broken wing?
A search of the Internet turned up a nine-minute video demonstration posted by the Live Monarch Foundation, a nonprofit group, on how to fix a broken wing.
On Sunday, the couple took the healed monarch in a shoebox to Scotty’s, a popular and busy truck stop about 35 miles north of Albany. Anybody looking for company on the trip south?
Eventually, a trucker from Alabama, on his way to Florida, raised his hand. A few days later, the trucker called: The butterfly was loose in Florida with its mended wing.
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