Personal Essay: My Butterfly

I am not a butterfly collector but someone asked me to share this.  In passing I mentioned that a couple of years ago I found a dead butterfly on the stoop of my mother’s house.  I think it was summer, but I don’t exactly remember.  I just looked up the purchase of the display box and it was in the first week of September of 2020.  So I must have found the butterfly within of a week of that.

I found the dead butterfly on the front steps and I was surprised.  It had just plopped there.  My mother does have a pretty garden and I have seen butterflies fluttering about often.  I never saw a dead one before, and one completely undamaged.  I went to pick it up thinking it would fly away, but it didn’t move.  So I picked it up, realized it was dead, and thought it was beautiful.  I can’t imagine it had been a long time since it had died.  My first thought was of the author Vladimir Nabokov.   He was a passionate butterfly collector.  My next thought was, maybe I should try to preserve this like the collectors. 

I delicately put the butterfly on the passenger seat of my car and drove it home.  I figured you needed to refrigerate it, since that is what they do with dead bodies.  I put it in a plastic container and put it in the refrigerator until I read up on how to preserve it. 

You can Google it and find a bunch of sites.  There are variations on the process.  One thing I read that I was certain was that the body needed moisture from drying out.  So I wet a paper towel and put the butterfly inside the wet towel, then back in the plastic container, and then back in the refrigerator. The moisture is supposed to “relax” the butterfly.  I think I kept it in moisture for several days.

So I researched different display boxes and found one that was the perfect size and came with foam filler.  I had planned to follow the directions on pinning the butterfly into place but I realized that the foam actually pressed the butterfly against the glass, and so held it in place without pinning.  Good thing.  I probably would have screwed up the pinning and ruined the body.

Next was that you needed an antiseptic to preserve the body and prevent other insects from munching on it.  Moth balls turned out the easiest solution.  So behind the foam I placed a nice amount of moth balls, centered the butterfly on top of the foam, and closed up the box.  I have never opened it.

 

I think it’s gorgeous.  Comparing the pictures of male and female monarchs, this appears to be a male.  In passing I called this a tiger butterfly but on reflection and checking pictures on the internet, this may be a monarch.  I don’t know the specific differences but the color and line pattern of my butterfly seems to fit the monarch more so.  If anyone can tell the difference, let me know.  Here’s another picture with a ruler to gage the size.

 

It’s almost five inches.  According to the Wikipedia entry, they are supposed to have a wing span of four inches.  So this is a very big one.  

Maybe this is a better picture.  There is some glare off the glass in the above photos.