Nature has a dark side

I love encouraging certain insects and invertebrates into my garden. I have a list of favourites and also a mental list of those I will destroy on sight where possible. Is this fair? No. It is based purely on what's in it for me. If a critter is designed to damage or destroy a plant I value and I can eradicate it, I will. I do my best not to think about the morality and the unfairness. Life for humans too is unfair.

Slugs, snails, aphids and green caterpillars that love eating my food plants are exploded between my fingers or under foot. The hose is usually handy to wash the mess of it off my hands. Luckily I am not a buddhist. I use the digital approach - using my digits to quickly stop the slaughter of my food plants.

There is ONE exception, and I am not alone in this. Many of us enjoy raising Monarch caterpillars to the butterfly stage. They are truly beautiful creatures and only eat the specific plant we offer them. 

Since swan plant is their only food I have learnt to keep these perennial plants growing all year, though they don't like frosts. I usually have two 'crops' of butterflies each summer. This year the second crop has recently raised some very concerning thoughts for me and also neighbours. Could there be a toxin in the air, settling on our plants in parts of Rolleston? My observations and those of neighbours:

At least 60-70% of the caterpillars have had deadly problems.

Some chrysalids are smaller than normal

They often don't emerge from their chrysalis; mummifying or just dying

Severely deformed bodies and wings

Add to this anecdotal reports from neighbours of 'spray-type' smells in the air in the past month or so, unexplained headaches that go away when the sufferer leaves Rolleston for several hours. There is a heck of a lot of dust about since Hughes Developments created an environmental desert behind my property to start a massive (truly massive) subdivision. Was anything toxic sprayed? What could have been disturbed in the dirt? 

It is very distressing to see beautiful caterpillars and then butterflies in this horrifying state.

I tried to help one. I'd noticed it trying to leave its chrysalis but left it to get on with it. The next day it had made no progress. I noticed the casing was super thick, almost like plastic, unlike any I had seen before (see ajacent photo). I tried to prise it apart with my fingernails to help the butterfly which then tumbled out, all rumpled. It was unable to spread its wings and after observing it closely on my arm, I saw it only had two legs. I popped it on a flower but knew it was doomed. There was nothing normal about the insect. 

The same day three other butterflies emerged that were equally doomed. One side of their bodies was correct but the other side had wings that were deformed into the shape of a surfer's wave. Impossible for them to balance or fly. You can see it clearly in the photos.

A neighbour informed me he had the same thing happening to his butterflies. What is going on? I know nature makes mistakes from time to time, especially with such a complex process such as metamorphosis but I have never seen such suffering on such a scale.