Then, my boy, who seemed reluctant and maybe even wounded: “Come to me!” I brought my finger to him and he hopped on my hand. At one point he fell to the deck and I retrieved him.

I don’t know how I managed to take photos but I did and though I hadn’t set the camera to “Live Photo,” a little angel must have changed the settings and I ended up with a second-snapshot of the moment with my boy.

After many minutes and mutual contemplations, he took off as I held my breath, hoping his wing would take him, and it did, higher and higher, toward my tree, around and about, flutter, flutter and gone.

My lesson was never to underestimate the strength of another. And to always express gratitude for a relationship with everything, no matter how small.

Quadruplets waiting for release

Sometimes they don’t want to leave. It is never easy to say farewell.
After raising a little creature from an egg, many times even watching the process from the beginning,
feeding, going through all the stages, watching the end result of the birth (I’ve never caught them emerging)
the parting is bittersweet.

Alas, some don’t make it! We may never know why the pupa will die. It can actually be prey to a wasp which will emerge instead of a butterfly. Experiment: We had left a newly hatched egg on a parsley plant and one day it just was not there; maybe it was eaten or washed away during watering. The next fellow was left on a parsley plant and he ate most of it. After he was moved to the plant with the other little one, he just disappeared and left behind a puddle of goo. It is likely that had we taken them in they would have survived. We wanted to see how far they would get for a while on their own. So the odds for survival in nature are not as good as a controlled natural environment.
In the end, these butterflies will only live 2-3 weeks.