Friday, October 21, 2005

Butterflies are free...and plentiful

I've seen more butterflies in and around my small town in the last three months than I have my entire lifetime.

There, I said it.

You heard me, butterflies.

Let me just stay that if these insects were called anything else other than butterflies, men wouldn't feel strange about dreamily watching their elegant flight paths that act as a stimulant to compose cheesy poetry worthy of a Susan Polis Schultz Blue Mountain Card.

Right this very instant, there are what my non-entomologist eyes tell me are three monarch's slurping up nectar from a yet to be identified white-flowered bush outside my kitchen window. A menage a Danaus plexippus.

All my life back in So Cal, I don't think I've seen more than a dozen or so butterflies.
Moths, sure. Turn on a 40-watt on your porch and you can catch and torture as many as you want.
But butterfly sightings were a rare and treasured occurance. At least in the San Gabriel Valley.

However, after 3-months of the winged beauties flittering around, I find myself sadly jaded to their multitudes.

No longer feeling sorry for the stray one that gets splattered on my windshield at 65 mph, or the one who finds itself helplessly lodged underneath the tin arm of my windshield wiper.

Fact of life that beauty in the millions becomes ordinary and if you ask out 1000 super models, at least one of them is bound to say "yes."

2 comments:

-M. said...

Every year the Monarch butterflies migrate from Canada to southern California and north Mexico for the winter (November to February). I guess you must be in the flight path. A couple of times Leslie and I have went to Pismo Beach to see Butterfly grove and the butterflies are so thick on hanging from some trees it takes a minute to realize they are not leaves. I find it strange that it is a different generation that travels north as opposed to south so how they find the same grove of trees every year is beyond me.

OKDad said...

I envy the wonders of nature you'll see in your new digs in Eugene.
The Willamette River Valley is splendid.
Just watch out for those slugs!