The Butterfly Effect

I have spent some quality summer hours sitting with butterflies. I've occasionally been told I'm for the birds, but I've always loved the butterflies. What's not to like?

As a Master Gardener (now lapsed) I was "helping" Claire Herzog in her horticulture classes at Laurel Nokomis School. Unfortunately, I discovered the butterfly box in her classroom and I was a goner. While lessons went on over the weeks, I lingered near the box, watching as Monarch caterpillars munched on milkweed, climbed to the top of the box, spelled the letter "J" and eventually became chrysalises. (The word should be chrysalides, but lets let it die its awkward death.)

I've learned recently that the various stages of those creepy/too-beautiful caterpillars are called instars. How fabulous a word is that? Not awkward at all.
I was present at various "releases" of newly-hatched and properly- warmed butterflies as they were sent off (sometimes reluctantly) into the world.

One summer I was able to bear witness to a chrysalis being spun and a butterfly being born. The chrysalis - (I'd've called it a cocoon when I was a kid) - was a shimmering light green. The really magical markings were a tiny golden chain of metallic-seeming dots at its neck. The tiniest of Crown Jewels. (Grandbabe Taylor has provided me with the information that this is the "zipper".)(Forget about jewels, please!)

Weeks went by but the time came when the tiny green pouch gradually darkened, and somehow became transparent, the dark wings visible, but not quite. I was filled with awe at the IMMENSE struggle it seemed to take at either end of this cycle. Let me use the words "convulsing" and "great exertion." Being "in labor" might apply here. And it wasn't easy for the butterfly either!

I was surprised to see M. Butterfly emerge HEAD FIRST, doing some kind of Chubby - Checker-Twist, hanging-dangling on while the rest of her damp self kind of slipped out - followed by more hanging around and uncrumpling and eventual soaring into the day.

On a more recent summer day, I had a butterfly land on my knee. Another day, one flew by so closely that I could feel the "wind" and the warmth of its flight. Would it be too much of a leap to wonder if this was my same observed hatchling - or her heir?


So moving! How much more could I take? Rapture and passion are fine, but I'm exhausted. Eventually, I suppose, I will have to stop the weeping and sighing.