Retired teacher Jeri Trudeau of Gloucester has raised monarch butterflies for more than 15 years. This month, she released three newly-hatched monarchs. She had rescued them as eggs from her home pollinator garden. They eat only milkweed, Trudeau said. The eggs hatched, and the young grew quickly eating milkweed placed in their habitat. The caterpillars crawled to the top of her mesh habitat, made Js with their bodies, spit out webbing to make a button to hang from, and pupated, each in a green chrysalis. Before hatching, each chrysalis opened or “eclosed” to reveal the butterfly inside. Soon they were free and released.

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