Attracting butterflies to your yard is similar to counting chickens before they hatch: Despite doing everything you?re supposed to do, they still may not appear. It?s always a gamble. But you can "put your thumb on the scale" and make it less of a gamble if you know what turns a butterfly on. By starting to plan now, you?ll improve the odds.

The life of a butterfly is also a perpetual gamble. In only a week or two, a female butterfly can lay hundreds of eggs. Yet only a few of them will become adult butterflies. Knowing the needs and dangers that a butterfly faces as it grows up, including its predators and defenses, will increase your chances of a butterfly show in your garden.

Butterflies-to-be are most vulnerable to predators and disease during the caterpillar (larval) stage in the early spring. During this time they need what are called "host plants."

Sometimes, the host plant the caterpillar uses as a food source is considered a "weed" and is destroyed by gardeners.

Caterpillars must use specific host plants, and the destruction of these plants affects the number of butterflies. Indiscriminate use of pesticides is also responsible for the demise of many eggs, caterpillars and butterflies. On average, out of 500 eggs, only five survive the typical backyard living conditions. This pathetic survival rate can be frustrating to gardeners who are intent on luring thesebeauties by planting host plants necessary for laying eggs and feeding larvae.

Throughout the summer (when most butterflies grow up) and into the fall, nectar plants are vital to a butterfly?s survival, particularly for migrating butterflies such as monarchs. They need a clean water source, too. Predators vary. Birds will swoop down and pick off a caterpillar for lunch or try to snatch a butterfly in flight ? though birds aren?t a big problem. Frogs, toads, lizards and rodents hunt these would-be butterflies too.

However, the biggest problem by far is humans, and the bug sprays, chemical fertilizers and weed killers we use, plus our predilection to have big lawns and to cut vegetation low to the ground.

The main attractant to butterflies searching for a stopover place is an abundance of the right kind of plants, so that they can fuel up on nectar. Texas plays an important role as an "aerial highway" for spring and fall butterfly migrations, as they make their way to and from their wintering home.

Monarchs are most notable in this respect, but last spring we were treated to hordes of migrating Gulf Fritillaries. About 440 species of butterfly have been reported in Texas. Among them are the Zebra, Painted Lady, Question Mark, Viceroy, Pipevine Swallowtail and the one we?ve all seen ? the Monarch.

A list of the "right kinds of plants" for North Texas includes mistflower, verbena, lantana, Turk?s cap, milkweed, butterfly weed, scarlet sage and yarrow. In Texas these plants are best planted in the ground during the fall, but winter and spring are acceptable. An important criterion (still imagining that you?re a hungry butterfly) is that there should be a "mass" of plants, not simply one or two.

Also, plants that are native to this area are spotted more readily by butterflies than plants originally brought here from other parts of the world.

Certainly, food and a place to safely lay eggs are necessary for butterflies, too. I?d also recommend passionvine, clover, sunflower, sumac and a wide variety of native grasses ? at least a foot tall.

If you?re serious about attracting butterflies, nothing that?s artificial, man-made or poisonous should be sprayed on your landscape.

Caterpillars (which become pupae, which become butterflies) are often confused with more destructive bugs and are squashed or sprayed on sight. For example, a homeowner will kill a green, yellow and black caterpillar on a parsley plant without realizing it will soon be a gorgeous Eastern black swallowtail.

Chunks of roadside or unmaintained lots are often filled with wildflowers and native grasses ? a future banquet for butterflies. Spray a pesticide or herbicide, however, and it will become a butterfly wasteland. Only after the owner, or the city, stops spraying will the butterflies return.

Do everything that?s recommended and butterflies might visit your yard. It?s still a bit of a gamble, and you should start now to get the odds in your favor. But if you don?t give it a genuine try, it?s a sure thing that your yard will be as attractive as the Sahara Desert to a butterfly.