Kay MacNeil releases a young monarch butterfly in her yard in Frankfort. MacNeil has turned her kitchen into a monarch nursery, where the insects are free to safely hatch from eggs into caterpillars, and subsequently transform into butterflies. - Original Credit: Donald MacNeil (Donald MacNeil / HANDOUT)

Kay MacNeil, of Frankfort, describes herself as “a seriously deranged lover of caterpillars and butterflies.”

As a child, she came down with a terrible rash on her arms. Her family physician recognized the cause right away, she said. “He asked me, ‘Have you been playing with caterpillars? Do you let them crawl up and down your arms?”

Indeed, she did. So did lots of kids.

“It was the 1950s,” said MacNeil, now the mother of two grown children and a wife of many years. “We all collected caterpillars. We’d trade them and put strings on them to walk them like pets.”

For some time now, it’s bothered MacNeil that kids no longer do this — the main reason being that large caterpillars like those of the monarch butterfly are not as plentiful they once were.

Even more worrisome to MacNeil, who is president of the Prestwick Area Garden Club and a former president of Garden Clubs of Illinois, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature recently categorized the migrating monarch butterfly for the first time as “endangered.”

“The news is devastating,” she said.

It also puts Illinois’ state insect just two steps away from extinction.

Kay MacNeil points to a type of butterfly weed called Hello Yellow growing in her Frankfort yard. MacNeil is intensifying her crusade to save the monarch butterfly, which feeds on milkweed, by selling seed packets. (Susan DeGrane / Daily Southtown)

Loss of habitat, pesticides and genetically modified crops are to blame, MacNeil said, “But gardeners can help with this more than they probably realize.”

Which explains why MacNeil is intensifying her campaign to get area gardeners to grow milkweed. The plant’s leaves are the primary food source for monarch caterpillars. Nectar from milkweed flowers serves as a major food source for adult monarchs as well.

MacNeil has turned her own yard, which borders the Prestwick Country Club golf course, into a haven for numerous butterfly and bird species. Amid the wilder edges and even closer to her house, monarchs, black swallowtails and white cabbage moths flit about among the native trees, plants and flowers.

Chickadees, wrens, orioles, robins, blue jays and tiny songbirds dart in and out of Hawthorne, oak, Osage orange and pawpaw trees. To enhance her wildlife sanctuary, MacNeil has even left a couple of old tree trunks standing, minus any limbs. These, provide shelter for birds, squirrels, chipmunks and other small creatures.

In this Midwest paradise, she has planted several varieties of milkweed.

“Growing milkweed is the only way to help the monarch,” she said, “Monarchs must have milkweed to survive. If you don’t grow it, they won’t come.”

MacNeil says this while standing next to the large lily pad pond in her front yard. The pond is surrounded by milkweed and other native perennials supportive of the monarch, including purple coneflower.

The common milkweed growing here resembles a rubber plant with fragrant pink tennis-ball sized blossoms. The swamp milkweed features dreamy white blossoms and goes by the name of Ice Ballet. The butterfly weed, also known as Hello Yellow, sports eye-catching yellow blossoms.

MacNeil, who claims to be “a compulsive plant collector,” also grows nonnative tropical milkweed, which displays distinctive deep orange blossoms.

“There are at least 10 varieties of milkweed — plants in the asclepias family — that grow in the Midwest,” she said. Along with the varieties in MacNeil’s yard, the list includes prairie milkweed, purple milkweed, tall green milkweed, hairy balls milkweed and narrow leaf milkweed.

In garden club circles and among her neighbors, MacNeil has earned a reputation as “The Butterfly Lady.”

A monarch caterpillar munches on milkweed in the kitchen of Kay MacNeil's home in Frankfort. “Monarchs must have milkweed to survive. If you don’t grow it, they won’t come,” she said. (Susan DeGrane / Daily Southtown)

The National Garden Club bestowed to her as a longtime member and chapter president its highest recognition — the Member Award of Honor for her “Milkweed for Monarchs” program. She started the program in 2015, aiming to involve gardeners in saving monarchs in the greater Chicago area and across the U.S.

Since then, MacNeil has given numerous presentations to scout troops and garden club gatherings about the insect’s life cycle, its unique migratory habits and flyways through North America from Mexico to Canada.

On Earth Day in 2021, she joined Bloom Township Highway Commissioner Joseph Stanfa and Bloom Township Clerk Carla Matthews in a giveaway that put milkweed seeds into the hands of thousands of area gardeners.

MacNeil supported Stanfa’s proposal for planting milkweed along township roads to support monarchs on their migratory journey. The Illinois State Toll Highway Authority and the Illinois Department of Transportation also got behind the effort.

MacNeil also helped to establish community butterfly gardens in Bloom Township and elsewhere.

A milkweed seed packet explains Kay MacNeil’s strategy for saving monarch butterflies. (Susan DeGrane / Daily Southtown)

She unveiled her YouTube video, “Milkweed to Monarchs” at the 2018 Chicago Flower and Garden Show. The video teaches viewers “how to become the mother of a caterpillar.” The job doesn’t involve changing diapers, but it does require clearing away frass or caterpillar poop, MacNeil said.

MacNeil’s website www.MilkweedForMonarchs.info provides everything a person would need to know to grow milkweed and raise monarchs. It also includes links to additional resources.

The website urges viewers to order three kinds of milkweed by sending $2 cash to MacNeil’s Frankfort address along with a self-addressed stamped envelope. The money helps defray the cost of postage and the processing of milkweed MacNeil cultivates and others provide to her.

“I don’t make any money on this,” she said. “Everything goes to help the monarchs.”

MacNeil also sells seed packets in larger quantities to groups. She has even provided seeds as party favors for wedding receptions.

“Growing the milkweed is the most important thing,” she said. “You don’t have to actually raise the butterflies, but it gives them a better chance of surviving to adulthood.”

MacNeil wants to dispel misinformation about raising caterpillars in captivity. “It’s not true that their internal compass or sense of direction will be off, that they won’t know true north,” she said. “You can raise them indoors and this won’t happen.”

MacNeil has transformed her own kitchen into a monarch nursery. Tiny eggs sit like cream-colored dots on green leaves kept moist with clip-on water tubes like those used in floral bouquets.

In the coming weeks, caterpillars no thicker than an eyelash will emerge and grow to the girth of a pinkie finger, then hang upside down in used plastic pretzel jars and become jewel-like, jade-colored chrysalides dotted with gold.

On Monday afternoon, she released two monarchs that had recently emerged from their chrysalides.

Later, while seated at her dining table, MacNeil checked the progress of one very plump and healthy-looking monarch caterpillar. Covered in brilliant white, yellow and black stripes, the tiny creature wiggled its antennae in response to her voice. It then stopped munching on milkweed to consider her giant hand.

“He’ll be ready to go into chrysalid stage in a day or two,” she said, smiling with childlike anticipation.

MacNeil is still playing with caterpillars, just not letting them crawl on her arms.

Susan DeGrane is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.