Joann Merritt's Essays

Cake Is Good Enough For Me
December, 1990

I was reminded of an incident from my childhood when Frances told about the Queen who said “The people have no bread? Let them eat cake!” I remember that we were eating the dinner my Swiss Grandma, Katarina Kuhn Bleiker, had prepared for us. As Grandpa Johannes reached for a slice of plain cake Grandma exclaimed “Wait, Papa! That’s cake! I forgot the brot.” Grandpa replied “Yah, but that’s all right Mama, der cake is gut enough for me.” These entertaining expressions of remembrances are more than good enough, they are an absolute joy and delight to me.

Don and I set a goal of photographing the life cycle of a Bordered Patch Butterfly. As we returned from our morning walk we stopped by a Sunflower patch where this orange, black and white beauty was abundant. Finding and taking pictures of the eggs, caterpillars, chrysalides and adults didn’t seem like too great of a challenge, but at times it was a frustrating task. Have you ever searched for tiny butterfly eggs under Sunflower and Cowpen Daisy leaves? The female alights on the leaf, then thrusts her ovipositor underneath and lays up to 500 eggs. During the summer we had documented mating Bordered Patches, various sizes of caterpillars, a chrysalis and a newly emerged adult with it’s wings still crumpled and moist, so finding the eggs completed the life cycle. The eggs were a golden yellow at first but as the caterpillars formed inside them the eggs turned dark. The eggs were always laid on a host plant as the tiny caterpillars need food immediately upon hatching. The chrysalis can be attached to anything as the adult is able to fly to a source of nectar soon after it hatches.

In the fall we found approximately 200 Bordered Patch chrysalides attached to the white siding of a barn where we had previously seen dozens of them on an adjoining pipe fence and gate. When the caterpillar is ready to make its chrysalis it spins a small silken pad on an object or plant to which it attaches itself via a cremaster, a small hook at the end of its body. We brought caterpillars home and fed them fresh Sunflower and Cowpen Daisy leaves until they stopped eating to prepare for transition into a chrysalis. The caterpillars eat ravenously and grow rapidly. Since their skin does not grow they must periodically shed it for a larger one. After such a molt we would find a small pile of black bristles, skin and head covering in the container. When they molt for the last time they do not replace their chewing mandibles because as adults they do not eat but obtain nourishment by sipping nectar and other fluids through a tube-like proboscis. The chrysalis varies in color and amount of markings but is always the same shape. The butterflies we observed emerged very quickly once the process started. We learned to watch closely when the butterfly’s wing pattern started showing through the chrysalis. The new butterflies pump fluid from their bodies into their wings, then open and close them, similar to someone exercising. After about thirty minutes in the morning sun their wings have dried and hardened and they fly away to begin the life cycle anew.

Our thanks to David White of Whiteye Enterprises who intended to use the Sunflower Patch area to park his equipment. When we explained our mission he obligingly postponed cutting the flowers as he had studied butterflies in college and therefore understood our interest.

After the late summer rains wildflowers were in bloom south of Midkiff Bog. Mother Nature had fashioned an appropriate setting for a Butterfly Extravaganza. There were exhibits of Color Coordination, Flower Preference and Proper Alighting Form along with Air Dancing and Dining on Nectar. As man is wont to do, nature’s setting was soon destroyed by a roadside mowing machine.

This fall we counted 31 Red Admirals in our yard as they fed on rotten jujubes. On a Sunday evening Don Hunter and the Crumleys watched with us as a Jumping Spider captured a Red Admiral and dragged it to his larder to be eaten later. We added several new species to our collection of Butterfly Slides of Midland County - a Large Orange Sulphur, a Viceroy and the tiny Streaky Skipper whose fully spread wings resemble a pleated cape.

Grandma’s cakes were plain with no icing but we could always dip sweet topping from the ever-present syrup bucket if we so desired. The icing on our Butterfly Cake comes from dipping into a bucket of friends, relatives, students and members of various clubs. As we share our slides and stories with them we can truly say “Yah, der Butterfly Cake is gut enough for me” - but it is better mit der icing.