Butterflies have time enough.
When I lived away from the creek I somehow became accustomed to not seeing butterflies. There weren’t any in town and even after I moved out a short distance, I never saw them. There were pastures, a creek and even crops, but no butterflies. In reflection I wonder if it was the pesticides that made the area bereft of their beauty. Perhaps butterflies are so fragile that their numbers and their health might be a barometer for us. An alert to environmental change or pollution.
Then I and some friends began bringing our horses to the creek to ride on the week-ends and I once again was reminded of their rare beauty as we would spot them along a trail. I recall one particular afternoon along a high ridge in late August when the numbers of colorful kaleidoscopes took to the wing and fluttered magically about us. Their presence seemed to be a blessing on what had already been a wonderful day.
A few years ago I was shucking corn down by the lower garden and suddenly this small Copper, an orange butterfly, alighted on my arm. Gently I shooed it away but it immediately returned to land in my hair, on my face and on my leg. Even when it flew a short distance it would soon return and remained with me all that morning.
Then there was what I referred to as the year of the butterfly as the air was full of them in all different sizes and color. Driving along the country road here, you could see the mangled bodies of the dead that had been finished off by cars as they flitted wantonly from wildflower to wildflower.
Butterflies are insects and come into the yard and garden looking for nectar from the flowers. Their early days are spent as wingless caterpillars and then they change into
glorious creatures flitting in the wind. As a caterpillar they live in grass, on the underside of leaves or they are hidden under a silken web on the leaves they eat. Butterflies use a garden as a restaurant and usually have to leave your garden to lay their eggs. Unfortunately this does not hold true about Cabbage White butterflies. Cabbage Whites lay their eggs on the vegetable and causes severe damage to the crop.
The beauty of the butterfly has brought about some strange behavior from humans. One being that butterflies are popular tattoos. My thought on that would be, don’t! The butterfly that looks so great on your breast when you are twenty will stretch into a buzzard when you turn sixty-five.
Then there is the practice of releasing large numbers of butterflies at ceremonies such as weddings and memorial services for loved ones. There are actually companies that sell them in either individual boxes or one giant release container..
But the true obsession are the few that have spent their lives tracing the Monarch. One such man, Dr Fred Urquhart had been trying to discover where the “Royals” spent their winter months since 1937, as it had long been known they fly the length of North America twice in their short lifetimes. In a book by Bianca Lavies, published in the early nineties, Bianca tells of the discovery of the winter home in the Sierra Madre Mountains in Mexico.
It was hoped that the sites would be kept secluded but thousands of tourists flocked to see Monarch butterflies so thick they blanketed the ground, hung from branches and the tree trunks. Bianca described when the sun hit them how they fluttered into the sky, “rising above the trees like puffs of orange and black smoke.”
Another condition that endangers the Monarch, beside humans, is the herbicides that kill the milkweed plants where the monarchs feed and lay their eggs. Milkweed has a chemical that creates a bitter taste to birds and can actually be poisonous to them, thus birds soon learn that orange and black butterflies are not good food.
Monarchs that emerge in late summer and fall will not mate as the cool weather postpones the development of their reproductive organs. But those from spring and summer will mate within four days and live only about a month. They weren’t Monarchs but I had a pair of honeymooners in my backyard last week. They were two very large satiny black creatures with bright yellow insignia which reminded me of oriental marks. The lovers perched on the welcome spelled out on my back walk and then spent time on the stepping stones. They languished atop a picnic table and surveyed the world from the chiminea. Finally late in the afternoon they were gone.
Seeing butterflies here has become so common that there are times I barely notice them. But every now and again the Great Spirit takes a hand and makes you aware there are still miracles. The miracle I speak of took place a few years ago, just outside my back door. At that time I had bluegrass sod in the back yard. To insure that it survived during intense heat, I watered it about every other day. I soaked it heavily one evening and then went to bed. The following morning, after coffee, I opened the back door to step out. What happened next is almost beyond description and no words on paper can ever completely describe the vast beauty my eyes were about to behold. The opening of the door ignited a bomb of butterflies in my back landscape. A fluttering of wings arose from the damp grass as hundreds and hundreds of the winged creatures surged upwards. Not one species but many comprised the volcano of color. The easy explanation is that they
were seeking the moisture of the grass. But sometimes we try too hard to explain away the simple everyday miracles and messages sent to us. Frankly I think I was being reminded that we humans are like butterflies flitting about for a day, thinking it will last forever. But as one great man said: “The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”
