I personally don't collect butterflies, any more. I did that in middle school. I outgrew collecting dead bodies after seeing how fast they deteriorate. I had a nice 35mm camera, as a young adult, and snapped enough photos to get a few pictures of plants, cats, and humans that were worth keeping, but never got a good view of a butterfly. Well, back then we were still saving whales, or trying to, and great blue herons. And no, I never snapped a good picture of a whale or a heron, either.
But I do know how to collect butterflies, if you want to do that.
You can industrialize the process, bring branches that have butterfly eggs on them into your workspace, observe daily when and whether any caterpillars hatch, try to feed them cut leaves of the kind on which they hatched, see when and whether any of them become butterflies (or moths), watch the butterflies (or moths) eclose, and gas them to death the minute they light after their first flight. It seems a lot of trouble to go to, when nature makes dead bodies of butterflies so easy to obtain. But you can.
Or you can let it happen naturally. By observing the butterflies and moths that live in your part of the world, you know when a butterfly generation passes.
Monarchs flit through my part of the world in spring, and it's fun to be out in the garden and watch one laying her eggs--after which you will not disturb those milkweeds, since letting Madame Butterfly lay eggs on them amounts to having nonverbally given her your word, so whatever ideas you had about geraniums or daylilies will have to work around those milkweeds. (I share the perception that they're not a pretty flower, too.) But although these are usually the first generation of Monarchs who have hibernated in Mexico, or maybe Florida, they don't die here. They might die in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, or Ohio. Monarch butterfly bodies can be found in October, when the last generation are heading back to Mexico. Their condition is usually imperfect. It is often possible to tell why they didn't complete their journey--whether they were crushed or bitten, or were older butterflies who might have known they wouldn't get to Mexico in any case and were just going with the flow, as far as they went.
Most of the first butterflies of spring, here, are at least part-time composters--Spring Azures, Silver-Spotted Skippers, Tiger Swallowtails, Wood Nymphs--species that don't travel very far, and like being near humans, or at least humans' compost. If you put fruit rinds and peelings on the compost heap, even pollinators like the Monarchs and most female Swallowtails will like you. If you live with a baby who wears oldfashioned cotton diapers, and you pre-soak the diapers in a tub on the porch before putting them in the washing machine, male Swallowtails and Skippers might as well be counted as family pets. Even Zebra Swallowtails will join the Tigers at what may easily become a lek in April.
Well, then, in May that first generation of spring butterflies start dying off. Some of the ones that hatch a little later, like the Fritillaries and Red-Spotted Purples, will fly a little later, too, and die in June, about the time the next generation of Tiger Swallowtails begin to fly.
I found a beautiful Fritillary out on the porch this morning. It looked ready to fly away, but it didn't fly. I remembered having seen it in the same position yesterday afternoon.
Which Fritillary was it? Dang. Perfect photo opportunity, no camera. It looked more like the pictures Google has of Argynnis atlantis than like the pictures Google has of Argynnis cybele, and was in the size range for atlantis rather than cybele, but atlantis are not normally found this far south and cybele are common here. Probably it was an undergrown cybele, the Great Spangled Fritillary. It was a small one, not a great one, but it was beautifully spangled, gleaming metallic gold in the sun. I do not actually care about these things enough to cut off the tail end of a dead butterfly, pickle it in formaldehyde to stiffen it enough, and dissect it under a microscope, to verify its sex and species. Right? It was a Fritillary. An old one, but well preserved, with just a few frayed spots on the edges of its orange-gold wings.
Fair use of photo from Friends of Nachusa Grasslands. In some lights, or when faded after death, they look dull brown and yellow above with white spots below. In sunlight, while living, they glitter. They prove that orange can be beautiful.
Anyway, I had no use for the dead body, but I do encourage violets in the shady not-a-lawn; fritillaries pollinate violet flowers and lay eggs on violet leaves. This one had the shape of a female who had laid all her eggs. There was no need to chase her down before she'd finished her life's work. When her job was done she just sat down and bequeathed to me a museum-quality body. If I'd been the sort of human who spreads dead butterflies out flat, dries them out, and pins them in display cases, that would have been just fine with her.
Same with the last of this spring's male Tiger Swallowtails, who gave himself back to the universe a couple of weeks ago. He was not so well preserved. Toward the end of his life he'd lost all of one hind wing, all but a tattered edge of the other; he could still fly, but probably not so well, and possibly he'd become afraid to venture beyond the cats' protection. (He was lucky. It took the cats some time to learn that butterflies are not good to eat.) He fluttered around the yard for a few days, enjoying the violets and roses, tattling when visiting tomcats tagged the yard, and finally one day he sat down on a branch watching Serena and me, and never got up again. We left him on the branch until rain washed him down.
Next sunny day, a gorgeous young female Tiger was fanning her wings and flaunting herself beside the creek, possibly a daughter or niece of his, teasing a shy but interested, young, perfect male. Life goes on, she nonverbally said. In Virginia, between March and October, if you walk a few miles, you are likely to see a Tiger Swallowtail. Most of one generation die in the week before most of the next generation fly.
You can't just go out and find a perfect specimen of a dead butterfly every day, but if you pay attention you can know when and where to look, and you probably will find one. There is no need at all to annoy living butterflies. People who collect butterflies usually seem to want an excuse to run off some of their surplus energy, but there is no need to chase butterflies about, really, if all you want are carcasses. A better excuse to follow butterflies is simply to observe which ones lay eggs, and where.
Sometimes it pays to take a proactive, aggressive, industrial approach to our work. The Bible (were you wondering whether this post was going to mention the Bible?) does not tell us to be slackers. It warns us against being "sluggards" who whine, "Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a lttle folding of the hands to sleep": "So shall poverty come upon you, and ruin as an armed man." It advises those "sluggards" to "go to the ant, consider her ways, and be wise," because the ant instinctively stores provisions for the winter. It advises people to "rise up early, while it is called today," when it's time to get a job done, resolve a disagreement, or help others. Its ideal of the "virtuous woman" already has children, apparently weaned, and has recovered her energy and figure; "her candle does not go out by night," and "she arises while it is yet night, and prepares food for her household and portions for her maidens." (By the time this woman is mature enough to be recognized as virtuous, her home is a thriving home industry that employs "maidens" and also "merchants": "She is like a trading ship: she gathers in food from afar.") The Bible knows all about the times to be a go-getter. Industry, in the sense of doing something productive with every minute of every day, is a good thing.
Yet there is a balance in all things. Some things are not obtained by industrious efforts. Some things, like butterflies, or happiness, or True Love, have to be allowed to make their ways to us. When people who think they want butterflies have sprinted a few miles, and tired themselves out, slid down a few hillsides, got their shoes wet, bruised their elbows and skinned their knees, and they finally sit down and stop hounding the poor butterflies, then butterflies--who don't know much, but they do know about being tired--are likely to come and sit on those people's hands. (Some butterflies like the taste of human sweat.)
That's why, a few pages away from the praises of virtuous entrepreneurs who are so productive that one can imagine that they don't sleep, the Bible warns, "It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrow; for so (God) gives His beloved sleep." When necessary work is done, failure to rest only makes us tired. And it's when we finally do rest that love, peace, and happiness come to rest on us. Resting--in the sense of getting enough sleep, enough solitude, enough time to think and plan as well as cranking out product--is productive. Time spent in prayer is productive. Time spent really attending to children is productive.
The wise little ant, having bustled about storing provisions for the winter during the summer, spends the winter resting.
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