A Winnipeg woman is doing her part to help the monarch butterfly population, and she is hoping other Winnipeggers will take up the mantle as well. Choo Choo Rosenbloom became hooked on monarchs during the pandemic when she noticed one had decided to call her house home. “I found a chrysalis under there and I spent hours watching this chrysalis become a butterfly,” she said. “Took photos, videos, whatnot, and I watched it all the way until it finally flew away.” Rosenbloom named that butterfly Queeney. It wasn’t long before Queeney returned and Rosenbloom said she seemed friendly. “She just let me get all the way, like on top of her, to take photos and did it again and again every day. It went on for a couple weeks and then she vanished.” Monarchs are just like birds as they fly south as summer turns into fall. They leave southern Canada and the northern United States and fly to places like Florida, California and Mexico. Then, the next spring, they return to start the next generation of monarch butterflies. Rosenbloom’s experience with Queeney was all she needed to know she needed to help more monarchs. So, she turned her yard into a monarch butterfly sanctuary – planting an endless amount of milkweed, which is the butterfly’s main source of food. “We’re helping the species survive because they are threatened and they need to have milkweed. If they don’t, if there’s no milkweed around, they can’t lay their eggs because they lay their eggs on milkweed and then the caterpillars need to eat milkweed. So it’s just very, very important and it’s so easy to do.” With the summer slowly fading, Rosenbloom is encouraging other Winnipeggers to think about adding milkweed to their gardens to give monarchs, which are an endangered species, a fighting chance.
