People sometimes ask, “How do you pick the stories you write about?” One of my favorite ways is to find one, tell it to family and friends, and watch their response. If it’s a lukewarm ho-hummer, I doubt whether it will appeal to readers. But if their jaws drop, I know I’m onto a good one. So when I told Valerie that scientists shoot lasers to count masses of overwintering monarch butterflies, she said, “WHAT?” I told her that people attach fingernail-sized adhesive tags to their wings to track migration and she said, “That’s crazy. They don’t do that.” But when I asked her to join me on a 2-week trip to the California coast to chase the people that chase monarchs, ending in her hometown of Ventura, she answered with a 
resounding “YES!”
On our second day in the field, we joined volunteers at the Pismo Beach Butterfly Grove to count monarchs (through binoculars, the old-fashioned way) from Canada and the western U.S. that overwinter in eucalyptus trees. Pismo is the epicenter for migrating western monarchs, and the California State Parks and a legion of dedicated volunteers have created a one-of-a-kind viewing and educational experience for visitors. Last year, people from 44 countries and nearly every U.S. state made it the most visited butterfly sanctuary in the world.
We had barely begun our count when, with beginner’s luck, I spotted a circular tag on the underside of a butterfly’s wing. I studied it through my spotting scope and then jotted down its number. Thus began an email string with Dr. David James, a Washington State University lepidopterist who’s enlisted incarcerated men at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla to tag and release monarchs. David confirmed my sighting as one of his tags, this from another group of volunteers in Applegate, Oregon—over 600 miles from the grove! Tagging and long-distance migration is just part of the monarch’s story, and its full saga will be one of the chapters of my next project, Scientists Do the Wildest Things. I’m planning a trip to the mountains outside of Mexico City for next winter, where the eastern Monarchs congregate by the millions. I’ll keep you posted.