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.