The butterflies didn’t return this year.

I’m sure they meant to, but I heard there was a freak spring ice storm in Mexico. The trees which normally get covered with billions of Monarchs were instead covered in billions of Monarchscicles.

Surely some survived. Surely some winter over elsewhere—but they aren’t the ones that know to come here.

It was a couple of months before I realized I hadn’t seen ANY butterflies. Then in August I chanced upon one of those odd fluttering trios of cabbage moths, but that was it. Nothing but a lot of flies.

No frogs to eat the flies.

I miss the butterflies.