Photo caption: Photograph taken October 4, 2026, showing left-leg bruising extending into my thigh following my October 2 fall while searching for documentary subjects. The image accompanies my firsthand account; it does not independently establish the legal allegations.
The Monarch Murders: The Book I Never Planned to Write
By Lisa Loucks-Christenson
First-person commentary and book announcement
Would you fly through the eye of a floating needle to reach a missing dragonfly, two monarchs, and other subjects you feared must surely be dead by then?
Would an unverified rumor that one monarch had been released keep you searching?
It kept me searching.
The Monarch Murders is book four in my Flutterfields series—a book I never planned to write.
The series began with Trio of Monarchs, followed by Dolly: The Caterpillar I Knew Inside the Butterfly. Book three, Nine: My Mistakes, His Grace—How Nine Monarch Caterpillars Taught Me Faith Before Wings, carried my observations, mistakes, and faith into another chapter of these lives.
I did not expect that journey to lead to missing documentary subjects, belongings locked beyond my reach, damaged research materials, and a struggle to have my evidence heard.
But that is where book four began.
It also connects Flutterfields to my Canario™ series through the warning voice I call my “canary investigative journalist” identity.
I refuse to be un-sung.
A month or so before these events, I watched two tiny caterpillars—approximately 1 millimeter and 2 millimeters long—escape containers I believed were sealed.
I stood there shaking my head. How?
They had found openings I could not see.
Looking back through my faith, I believe those observations gave me something I would need later: the strength and “eye-bility” to recognize a passage when everything before me seemed closed.
That passage became the eye of a floating needle.
The needle is my metaphor for a narrow, shifting opening between the truth I am trying to document and the justice I am seeking. It is not proof of a legal allegation. It is how I describe the experience of trying to reach what mattered while risking what I had spent a lifetime building.
When faced with leaving in five minutes, I stood my ground despite the prospect of arrest. I could not move all my living documentary subjects in five minutes.
On September 9, 2026, our belongings were locked away. Noodle, a subject in my monarch study, was only hours from emerging, according to my observations. I allege that those responsible knew Noodle was there and knew emergence was approaching.
My first permitted access came on October 2, more than three weeks later.
It was late afternoon. There were no lights, and daylight was fading.
Pillows, hand-embroidered comforters, and personal belongings were mixed with things from the garage and gazebo. Boxes sat on plants I had kept for 20 years. Carefully stored books were bent, curled, and covered with dirt.
A broom and dustpan were nearby. I cannot establish that they were the source of the dirt.
I found a chair pushed into a work computer, through to its motherboard. Other computers and hard drives remained unaccounted for.
But my immediate mission was to find the monarchs, the dragonflies, and the other living subjects of my documentaries.
I fell through the boxes, off a church pew, and onto my grandmother’s chipped mirror.
The photograph accompanying this account was taken on October 4, two days after the fall. It shows my left leg, with bruising extending upward into my thigh. My other leg was also bruised, but I am not releasing that photograph.
In the language of The Monarch Murders, I fell into flight.
I was trying to reach the eye of the floating needle in subdued light, while the opening seemed to disappear with the daylight.
On October 3, I found a mixed-content box containing my medical illustration sketchbook, loose hard drives, and some of the missing insects. I located the monarch and other documentary subjects during my searches, but locating a subject does not, by itself, establish its condition or account for everything that happened.
Sonic, the dragonfly I had not had time to grab, remained unaccounted for.
He mattered to me.
So did the monarchs, the hornworm, the locust, and the other lives whose transformations I had been recording.
A tipster told me that some of my life’s work had been thrown into a dumpster. That remains a report requiring verification, not an established fact.
According to my account, Rochester police declined to take the animal-cruelty report I requested. I recall being told, “They’re just bugs, Lisa.”
They were not “just bugs” to me.
My search has also included my diabetic monitor, needles, test strips, and medication—including medication prescribed to control fluid buildup affecting my heart and lungs. At the time of writing, I report four weeks without access to those stored supplies and medications.
That is an urgent medical concern, not a measure of courage. My determination to find the subjects should not be read as encouragement to delay necessary care.
The Monarch Murders brings these experiences into the Flutterfields series while connecting them to Canario™: the warning voice, the witness, and the refusal to let unanswered questions disappear.
I will distinguish what I witnessed from what I allege. I will identify what remains unresolved. I will not ask a photograph to establish a legal conclusion it cannot prove.
And I will keep singing out.
I refuse to be un-sung in every flight I take against alleged collusion, fraud, and injustice.
This is the book I never planned to write.
I am writing it because the lives mattered. The work mattered. And what happened deserves an accurate account.
Photo caption: Left-leg bruising photographed October 4, 2026, two days after my October 2 fall through boxes, off a church pew, and onto my grandmother’s chipped mirror while searching for documentary subjects.
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About the author: Lisa Loucks-Christenson is an investigative journalist, author, illustrator, photographer, documentary creator, and founder and publisher of Rochester Sun Times News. Her work connects wildlife observation, personal testimony, investigative reporting, and faith. She is the creator of Canario™ and the Flutterfields series: Trio of Monarchs; Dolly: The Caterpillar I Knew Inside the Butterfly; Nine: My Mistakes, His Grace—How Nine Monarch Caterpillars Taught Me Faith Before Wings; and the forthcoming fourth book, The Monarch Murders—a book she never planned to write.