With a pioneering procedure, a nature center in New York made sure that a broken wing wasn’t the end of one monarch butterfly’s journey.

Famous for migrating from Mexico up to Canada, a Deer Park resident found one of these orange beauties stranded with the upper section of its right forewing broken.

Janine Bendicksen is the director of wildlife rehabilitation at the Sweetbriar Nature Center in Smithtown, NY, and she had to think fast when a woman brought in the injured monarch.

There were many monarchs inside Bendicksen’s vivarium, and wondered if maybe she could find a dead one and transplant its wing onto the injured one. Sure enough, a late resident was available as a donor.

“It was so intricate, because this butterfly could fall apart if I pressed too hard,” Bendicksen told CBS N

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