A story of a Viceroy Butterfly

This morning, as my kids were darting out the door to get to school, I heard them lingering at the outdoor staircase with excited little comments about something to do with a butterfly. A hurt butterfly, or something? By the time I came to see what the commotion was about, they themselves had figured out what had happened by discovering an empty chrysalis dangling above the weak, struggling butterfly on one of the steps. As I was putting two and two together, I had to tell my youngest son not to handle the butterfly's wings. He thought it was hurt and was, in his own way, trying to pick it up and help it along. He got a smudge on one of its wings, so I thought it may not be able to ever fly. Well, it was time for the kids to run along, but I assured them I'd take good care of it.

After waving the children off, I carefully had the orange and black winged creature climb up on my finger. I had never handled a butterfly before, as they are so hard to catch, so this was like a sacred moment for me. It was a real treat of a morning for me. All of the children away that morning- just me and this wonderful butterfly. Which kind, I didn't know yet, but that didn't matter at this point. My first instinct was to put it on a hibiscus flower, as I'd seen butterflies drink from its nectar often in our garden. But it didn't want to get on it and kept crawling back onto my finger. I felt as though it were like a baby chick who claims the first thing it sees when it hatches for its Mom. I thought to myself, "This butterfly thinks I'm its Mama!" Then, I thought, maybe it would like the tropical sage flowers better, and I was right. It stayed clung onto a few firecracker red petals and moved its wings to dry and sun them. It stayed long enough for me to take pictures, then it stayed almost an hour after that on those same few petals. When I came to check on it later, it flew away, and I was so happy to see that the smudge on its wing didn't keep it from flying.

While it had been sunning and drying out its wings, I had gone inside to identify it in my favorite butterfly book, "The Life Cycles of Butterflies." Right away, I saw it was a Viceroy because of its distinctive horizontal black lines along the two bottom wings. It's often mistaken for the larger Monarch, but these lines give it away for a Viceroy instead. The black body also has pretty white dots on it, also like the Monarch. My book is so cool because it also shows what the butterfly's crysalis looks like, and it was a match for the one it had slipped out of. The only thing that didn't make sense was that the crysalis was not hanging from any host plant that this butterfly is supposed to attach itself to. Oh well, I guess when they're ready to transform, any staircase will do!

Well, that's the end of my butterfly story.

Hen with Bare Back

I couldn't figure out how to put two photos on my blog about George, our naughty, oversexed rooster, so here's another photo of one of our black sexlings hens who is recovering from oversexed bare back syndrome brought on by our now imprisoned George (view previous blog.) As you can see from the photo, and I'm overjoyed to see, her feathers are growing back and she's looking more and more like a happy, healthy hen now that her past abuser is locked up.

Update on George: my son reported to me that George threw up and that it was a big, slimy, stinky wad of something grouse. Maybe he's trying to act all pitiful so we'll let him out. No way, buddy! Won't work! Never in my life of raising chickens have I ever known a chicken to throw up. Maybe he's in despair seeing all the ladies walk past him all day not being able to do anything about it.

George is in prison

I don't have too much time to write. I have my "second wave" of kids coming in a half hour on the bus. My "first wave" is my oldest and youngest at home with me in the morning with my pre-schooler coming home at noon.

Anyway, I've been itchin' to tell the story about our rooster named "George." We received him way back when almost two years ago when we exchanged one of our hens for someone else's rooster, thinking we didn't have one single rooster in our bunch of chosen young chickens. Turns out, once they got a little older, we realized almost half of our chosen bunch had been roosters, so now we had the problem of having too many roosters! (We only needed one to cockle-doodle-doo and do the fun job of fertilizing all the eggs.) We held onto all the roosters for a while, but soon they became aggressive with one another- especially one that also became aggressive with us. He actually beat my husband with its big wings and flew up on the children. He was quite a mean, frightening fellow. The end of him is another blog, let me tell 'ya, but we're talking about George. OK. Back to George. Anyway, long story short, we ate one rooster, then gave away the rest, but carefully chose to keep George. He is an attractive Rhode Island Red rooster, a perfect mating pair for our lovely Rhode Island Red Hen, which a neighbor gave us. We wanted to have pure Rhode Island Red chicks, so we kept George. Thought it was a great decision, but later we regretted it. Turns out, George would end up having an overdose of chicken testosterone and his little pecker wound up a little too tight. He ended up doing his fertilizing job a bit too well, rubbing off the feathers of all our hens backs, especially our "Blondie" white hen, though he did spare his equal Rhode Island Red female counter-part. She, the latter, was too tough for him and wouldn't let him have a land on her. Blondie, on the other hand, was a total wet noodle for him and submitted to him to her own demise. She became scared of him, but instead of getting tough and pecking him away or running away, she would just crouch to the ground and let him have at it. She looked like a half grilled chicken walking around- especially in the hot summer months. You could have just smeared some marinade on her back and let her get nice and aromatic. I felt so horrible for her and tried everything to make her life better, but she wouldn't be saved. First, I tried putting her in a separate area, but the lady kept flying back over the fence to her abuser. She was like an abused woman who would keep going back to her abusive husband! Then I bought a pink dog outfit for her to cover her back and hiney, but her wings wouldn't fit in the leg holes! I gave up on helping her for a while, but then once when my Dad visited, he suggested either roasting George, as he said he wasn't a normal-acting rooster, or putting Blondie out in the yard outside the fenced-in area. Well, I didn't have the heart to roast George, as we're really only raising chickens for their eggs, so we put Blondie out "in the green." She did well for a couple of days, but unfortunately had no safe coop to go into at night. Long story short, she disappeared and that was that. I hate to say I felt relieved. I'd tried to do everything for that gal and nothing had worked.

Well, once Blondie was gone, George had to put his pecker in other places so he continued rubbing the feathers off the backs of other hens. A couple of weeks ago, I finally got so sick of having pitiful looking hens, I asked my daughter, S, to "put him in prison." We had a newly build up area all fenced in all the way up to 8 feet, so now he couldn't fly out. Yeah! My hens are liberated! And it is a joy to see their feathers growing back. Their backs look like ones of a porcupine, but hopefully they'll look normal soon. My son is excited about fattening up George for dinner. He's feeding him an extra portion every day and giggles over it.

George doesn't even know the fate that awaits him. Stay in tune...