My Butterfly Hatchery

Welcome, mortal

I: A scientist is someone who endlessly studies the facts, the "why" and "how".

II: An artist is someone who translates their world for others to experience.

III: Both often experience infinite curiosity.

IV: Sometimes one is both a scientist and an artist.

V: Forever searching out the "why"s, and blending their mind to create something others will understand.

VI: Most just want to be seen and understood, as this artist does.

VII: Enter the world and mind of a transmasc nonhuman living in a human body.

VIII: Please understand that all found herein is subject to interpretation.

IX: May your world be the richer for peering through these strange and intense glasses.

August 20, 2014

My Butterfly Hatchery

I am going to write a bit about my butterfly hatchery that I had a few years ago.

It was a row of empty peanut butter jars with holes punched in the lids, that I had on our mantelpiece. Whenever I found a caterpillar crawling in the garden (which was about every day) I would put it in a jar with a stick, food; usually fennel leaves, because Black Swallowtail caterpillars (the ones I found most often) liked that best, and we had plenty of it; and a paper towel soaked with sugar water (in case if the butterfly hatched while I was not there.) I remember some days I had to release as many as five hatched butterflies. But this story is not about any of those, it is about the last butterfly I hatched.

One fall about two years ago, right before the first frost, we were hurrying, trying to get plants inside, and otherwise ready our garden for winter. I was picking green tomatoes to pickle, when I noticed, on the fennel plant beside me, a tiny black butterfly egg. I had a nicer butterfly cage now, (only it had never had a butterfly in it) it was a small, glass terrarium for growing cacti. I took care of my caterpillar, but when it hatched into a butterfly, I realized that it needed a better home. So in the middle of winter, I took Flutterby (what I had named my butterfly) to the zoo. I called them before I took him there, and set up a time to drop off Flutterby. After that about a week after I dropped him off, we went to the zoo, and I went into the butterfly house/ insectererium (I am not sure how to spell it) and a little black swallowtail landed on my shoulder, and did for the next two months whenever I went there.