Karen Kistner, age 13, of Easton, Conn.  for her question:

Do butterflies really migrate?

In one life time, a butterfly plays four vastly different roles. He begins as a small egg. The egg becomes a fat and hungry caterpillar. The caterpillar becomes a stiff and sleepy crysalis and the crysalis becomes a winged and glamorous butterfly. The earlier stages can usually endure for a short or a longer time, depending upon the weather, Some butterflies spend the winter months as eggs and some remain in the sleeping pupae stage. The Isabella moth hibernates as the woolly bear caterpillar.

The lovely angle winged butterflies hibernate as adults. One of them, the mourning cloaks often comes out on some sunny winter day for a flutter over the snow. And at least one butterfly migrates. Come fall, armies of taffy brown monarch butterflies spread their fragile wings and fly hundreds of miles down to southern California and the southwestern deserts. Come springs those that remain will fly back north.