Guest Blogger: Cheryl Harner, Lakesider
It was a collision of two of nature’s greatest phenomena, an insect migration and a hurricane, in a drama played out over Lake Erie. Southbound monarch butterflies, travelers they are called, the last generation of the 2018 broods, were headed out of Canada on a course for Mexico. They had caught the strong winds of a Nor’easter, heedless of weather reports calling for wind gusts of 40 knots. They were clueless of the stalled remnants of Hurricane Gordon, spilling the last of his coastal waters on a three-day binge in Ottawa County, Ohio.
The travelers made landfall, exhausted and spent from fighting the storm. They landed on any purchase to which they could cling. Reports started coming across social media with photos to verify. Hundreds upon hundreds of monarchs were stacking up on vegetation from Whiskey Island off Cleveland’s shore, all along the lakefront to the Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge on the western edge of our county on both Sept. 9 and 10.
By grace and fortune, wings landed in Lakeside as well. On Sept. 10, monarchs gathered en masse near the pavilion, a mere stone’s throw from the Angel Garden. It was a fitting temporary resting spot for the monarchs on course to arrive in Mexico the first week of November, in time for the local celebration of Dia de Muertos, or Day of the Dead (or All Souls’ Day). Tradition has it, monarchs are the souls of the ones who have passed during the year, returning to their loved ones.