A monarch rests against the back- drop of Gloria Dei.
have a lot of little ones throughout the area,” Uecker said. If there were more little way stations throughout the country—in people’s backyards and easily created with milkweeds and nectar plants—the monarch migration should sustain itself, he said. Uecker urges schools to create way stations, saying
it’s a great project for kids. He should know—he has been raising monarchs and caring for them since his chil- dren were young. Now his grandchildren help tend his way station and delight in looking for eggs, caterpillars and butterflies.
Though now retired, he once got his special education students involved. “The part I liked the best was when school started in the fall. That’s when the migration is getting under way,” Uecker said. “It was a neat way to start school. We would raise the last generation of monarchs for the year. Then when they hatched, we let them go on their migra- tion to Mexico. It was fun for the kids.”
He starts raising the monarchs when they return in the spring—about the end of May. He begins finding eggs on milkweed plants, with the first monarch hatching in late June.
On summer Sundays, Uecker is in Gloria Dei’s fel- lowship hall, often with chrysalides for people to take home so they can see—in the next one to 10 days—the miracle of the butterfly emerging.
Contact Uecker for more information at tluecker1@
msn.com. For “Creating a way station,” find this story at
www.thelutheran.org/feature/april.
Tom Uecker, a retired schoolteacher, has been instrumental in starting and tending the monarch way station at Gloria Dei.
April 2013 15
NAOMI YAEGER
ALISON STUCKE
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