the butterfly story

(butterfly, day one. this is as far as she'd venture outside her box...)

wow. that last post was number 400. how sad...i didn't even celebrate it with cake or anything. and i would have gladly taken that as a wonderful excuse to have cake. then again, i don't need much of an excuse to have cake. bday cake is the best though. the kind with the butter cream frosting...((insert homer drool noise here...)) yep...definitely one of my all time, favorite foods.

anyway here's the point of this blog...so, my kid and i found a butterfly. well, actually, my dog found a butterfly that couldn't fly--so we first, saved her from the dog and second, saved her from all that would have loved an easy meal. my theory on it was that in the dreary, muggy, soggy mess we called last week, she probably emerged from her cocoon. her wings were perfect, and healthy looking, but, like paper that gets wet, they were curved. apparently, that makes flying next to impossible as every time she'd try, she'd drop down with a tiny thud. i always see butterfly's sunning themselves, opening and closing their wings, but there hadn't been sun in awhile and the air was so saturated with dampness that she'd probably never really got to flatten out from being rolled up.

so, we crafted her a home from an old banker box. we filled it with grass, sticks, an old pear that i was gonna toss and a pot of pink impatiens. we propped one of the lights for my light box up and shone it in on her. it was a 100-watt bulb, so it definitely added some warmth. we left the cover off all the first day, as she couldn't go anywhere anyway, and she was perfectly fine just hangin out...well unless you gave her a finger to crawl on, then she'd want to be on you.

day two: she was still alive and trying to fly; surprisingly, she was getting better...so we moved her, and her surroundings, to an old birdcage and added sugar water to her diet of old pear. the birdcage was much bigger and she couldn't just fly down into the dog's mouth while practicing or anything, though she could squeeze out if she wanted--she just never tried.

day three, today: it was gorgeous outside. muggy stuff, gone. rain, gone. sun and wind, here. i decided to move the cage outside and as soon as i got her in the sun, she started opening and closing her wings and sunning herself. pretty soon, she was flying around her cage. we decided she was doing great so we freed her, only to have her start off incredibly strong, get hit by the wind and wind up flat on the ground. we scooped her back up and popped her right back in her cage. it sucked having to do that and our once tame, friendly butterfly didn't seem so happy anymore. anyway, we checked on her a couple hours later and she was gone! we're guessing she slipped through the cracks of the cage and simply flew away...which is all we wanted and were incredibly happy to see!

i love butterfly's and so does the kid--it was SUCH a cool experience to get to see one so close and all her parts...we watched her proboscis unwind as she ate food (and as she attempted to eat my shiny bracelet), we saw her turning her head as if she had a neck, we felt her sticky little feet climb on us, we studied her wings and the white dots on her thorax, we learned about her enemies and, best of all, we got her back to healthy. normally, butterfly's go so fast and want nothing to do you with you so you so this was an incredibly cool experience all around.

hmmm. that's the end of the butterfly story. i thought it was a pretty good one...though i may be a bit impartial. oh! i found this wonderful site that matches volunteers with opportunities. it's updated everyday. currently, my kid and i are looking forward to trying a few new things...first up, packing food for haiti...