When you least expect it.

The day began with mother-issues (the aide didn’t show). It took a few hours for things to resolve … Anxiety over having to get into Manhattan for a medical appointment in a predicted rain storm. The rain never came …

I let Hèrmes, our “community kitty,” in for breakfast, and in passing the butterfly house, I was surprised, if not gifted with the fourth butterfly. We NEVER expected any more emerging beauties at this time of year, we anticipated having to wait until next Spring. Nature knows. Somehow.

In this narrow window of opportunity without rain, without cold, with expected warming temps, one more butterfly emerged, the fourth one, yet we are not sure which one this is. There are still four pupae and three might be the first three: we do not know if they are alive. So this one might have been in the pupa stage for a month or two weeks.

 

#4, aka, Scott Carpenter (although I believe the amount of blue makes this one a girl), became very active and began climbing the walls and fluttering; the signal that she wanted out. We had to leave for an appointment and wouldn’t be back until late so we made a quick decision to release her before we left. It was a different experience.
The most touching experience: true, I knew this one, like all the others, from egg-dom into and through all of its stages, but with this one I made the attempt to let it land on my hand while still in the butterfly cage, before release.

 

 

Once out of the cage:

 

I wrote this little poem in the car on the way to the Manhattan appointment:

Today I Wore a Butterfly

Today I wore a butterfly—it didn’t want to leave,
it knew me since a ‘pillar
it latched onto my sleeve;
it fluttered by my shoulder,
it flew up to my face
and then upon a little gust
of breeze,
it left with grace.

©SusanKalish2019

Although it seemed ready to leave, once given the opportunity, it lingered and stayed. It returned to my hand, landed on my sweater, eventually made it up and airborne, over our fence and landed on my neighbor’s deck rail.

But then it just sat.

We attempted to get to it and return it to the cage, fearing it was too weak, but then it just took off, over the next fence to the area where the previous ones went.

Another one gone on its lonely journey.

Just like I would worry about any child, I worry it might rain or be too cold.

 

©SusanKalish iPhone XS max/Moment Macro lens or Camera+2 app macro setting