A flutter of magical hope on the Central Coast, as monarch butterflies return
LOS OSOS, Calif. — There was the distinctive noise of something falling.
Plop.
Plop. Plop.
It was the sound of pairs of monarch butterflies hitting the ground.
Mating season, which sometimes involves the male monarch hurtling the female from canopy to earth, had come early. In a small eucalyptus grove at the end of a housing tract, it was raining butterflies.
One pair landed next to a black Labrador stretched out in dappled sun. The dog wiggled to her feet.
"Careful, Shilo! Don't step on the butterflies," called her owner, Nate Everitt, who lives nearby and volunteers in the Coastal Access Monarch Butterfly Preserve in Los Osos.
Kingston Leong, an entomologist who watches over this and other little-known Central Coast monarch havens — and the first to document hurtling-from-the-treetops mating behavior — kept his eyes on the butterflies
