Meet the Sudbury woman who has raised hundreds of Monarch butterflies

Marie St. Denis, 87, has spent the last four summers raising Monarch butterflies.

The process begins simply St. Denis will often find the caterpillars in her backyard.

"Some are tiny, like a piece of thread," St. Denis said. "[Or] more like a stubby pencil. You just have to keep on looking."

When she finds one, St. Denis breaks off the leaf the caterpillar is eating and takes both bug and leaf into her living room, finding them a place in one of dozens of empty, clear plastic containers covering her dining room table.

"Those are altar bread bottles," she said. "From the church. So I asked to have them."

"I used to put spaghetti, rice, whatever in it, and now I use them for my caterpillars."

Each bottle has at least one milkweed leaf and one, sometimes two or even three caterpillars inside. She also stores extra milkweed leaves in her refrigerator, changing them at night if needed.

St. Denis gets the milkweed leaves from her backyard, which is half-covered with the plant. Four or five times a day she ventures out into the milkweed patch to find more caterpillars.

If she didn't remove them from the patch, they may fall prey to earwigs, ants and spiders, St. Denis said.

"I find that when I bring them in, I save them and give them another chance," she said.

St. Denis' rescue mission started four years ago when she was visiting her sister in Kingston. She met a friend who did the same thing, but she had only rescued three or four caterpillars.

When she got back to Sudbury, St. Denis started growing her milkweed garden, and now spends each summer helping monarch caterpillars become butterflies.

"The first year I had nine, the second year there were none. Last year I had 153," she said.

By the end of this summer, St. Denis will have helped 138 caterpillars become monarchbutterflies.

"I like when they leave," St. Denis said. "I like to hold them in my hands and say, Go, go, come on., and they keep on going from one hand to another, as if to say, I don't want to go."

For St. Denis, raising butterflies is a little bit of work with a magical reward. She enjoys it so much she wants to spread the word.

"My son and my daughter are doing it, a neighbour'sdoing it, and I'm spreading the word around," she said. "A lot of people are looking into it, so there'll be more butterflies."

"It's good for nature."