I Believe In Butterflies

Butterflies are one of my favorite things in life. Their particular beauty and grace makes it impossible to look away. And they seem to magically appear out of nowhere. It’s a function of their thin bladelike wings and optical properties of the scales and pigments on their wings. Knowing this doesn’t ruin it for me. Not even a little bit.

Hand raising butterflies brought me a whole new respect and appreciation for them

By the way, hand raising is a sophisticated phrase for feeding and cleaning up after the ravenous poop machines known as caterpillars. Their only purpose in life is to eat, sleep, and grow. They’re essentially a mouth, butt, and a bunch of sticky little feet.

Along the way, caterpillars pass through a series of make or break stages including hatching, unzipping and discarding their own skin, dodging predators, finding what they need, and becoming their butterfly selves.

The idea of raising butterflies never crossed my mind until 2016, when I spotted two mature Eastern Black Swallowtail caterpillars enjoying the fennel in our kitchen garden.

The need for butterfly magic

This was a few months into my three years providing The Dude’s dementia care. The daily grind of keeping him safe and absorbing his hostile behavior put me in need of some butterfly magic. 2020 was my fourth year hand-raising butterflies. I released over 20 butterflies that year, but it almost didn't happen. There are no butterflies without caterpillars, and no caterpillars without host plants.

It seemed wrong to use the time, energy, and resources on something so frivolous when the pandemic was causing incalculable human suffering. My super eating houseguests were bound to cause extra trips to the store, burning through PPE, and raising the risk of COVID exposure. Eventually, our household’s elevated risk was established when my housemate’s co-workers kept getting COVID. What could a few butterflies possibly hurt in the middle of all that?

The combination of spring and my tweeps asking after “my butterflies” got me going. I took the responsible course of collecting potted parsley and dill while running errands, rather than making special trips. It took some doing, but we just scraped by. My amazing friends kept sending me lots of masks, and we never ran out.

Finding hope

In 2021, many years after planting our milkweed, we finally got Monarch caterpillars. I found them one afternoon right after my second life saving iron infusion to treat my anemia. At that point, my future was uncertain. Unexplained anemia is a known sign of advanced cancer, and it was months before my colonoscopy and upper endoscopy cleared me, but butterflies were for sure!

It wasn’t easy. Anemia and arthritis made me feel like my body was filled with burning hot lead. Every task felt nearly impossible. I don’t regret anything about raising those butterflies. Releasing each one lightens my heart and fills me with the hope that only watching nature continue can bring. We ended up releasing 17 Monarchs and 24 Eastern Black Swallowtails in 2021. Not too shabby!