Monarchs Gone Wild

Friend of IT and World Hum contributor Jerry V. Haines has been chowing down on cheap eats in Morelia, Mexico, where butterfly madness is going strong, and wrote about it in his CasualEats column for the TravelBeat network. He picked Morelia because it’s a college town and he figured that students know how to eat cheaply, but he wasn’t expecting hordes of other visitors:

Talk about your winter tourist influx! Each year 150 million monarch butterflies set off from the American North for warmer quarters

in the Sierra Madre mountains east of Morelia. Like so much in life, it’s all about sex. Flying as much as 3,000 miles for their session of “Monarchs Gone Wild” they mate, then the males die with little chance to brag about it. The females return to the States to lay their eggs, then they die, too. Their delicate lives

are made even more precarious by the risks of bad weather (freezing rain can kill them off by the millions), predatory birds that have learned to eat around their poisonous parts, and illegal logging of their preferred habitat, a species of fir tree called oyamel.

Haines gives the scoop on the local culinary treat favored by Morelian university students, gaspacho with an “s”, which is probably not what you think:

The Morelian version consists of chopped pineapple and jicama, crumbled cheese, two kinds of peppers, salt, and lime and orange juice. Other fruits can be substituted as they come into season.

Served in a cup with a straw and a spoon, Morelian gaspacho sounds like a refreshingly drinkable salad, convenient whether you’re running off to class or watching monarchs mate.  Thanks Jerry!

Photo by Jerry V. Haines at the Michoacan University in Morelia