Deephaven resident Beth Allen might know everything there is to know about monarch butterflies. “I might be boring you,” she says with a laugh, as she talks about her gig at Journey North, an organization of citizen scientists providing school-age kids with curriculum on the migration patterns of monarchs. (For the record, it’s never boring.) A class of kids can watch monarch eggs go through the cycle of life—caterpillar, chrysalis and butterfly—and then release the butterflies to migrate to Mexico, arriving just in time for Dia de los Muertos. Each classroom creates symbolic paper butterflies and sends them to Mexico. The butterflies return in the spring, completing the migration pattern. As symbolic migration coordinator for Journey North, Allen keeps track of the butterfly sightings shared by each participating classroom—from Canada to California to Mexico. “It’s such a wonderful program,” she says.
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