Butterfly, Butterfly, Fly Fly Away...

I lived in a town called Tarikere in the district of Chikmagalur in India, between the years of 1979 and 1982.  We had a GREAT front yard.  There were lots of flowering plants and my Mom also planted vegetables there.  My siblings and I used to play all the time in the yard.  There were countless butterflies and dragonflies that were attracted to our yard.  We used to chase them, catch them and play with them.  Looking back, I am sure we were cruel to them in many cases.

Fast forward to 2009.  We took my son to a butterfly conservatory (http://www.magicwings.com/) about three weekends back.  The entry fee was $32 for the three of us.  They did have a ton of butterflies and it was a nice visit.  We ended up buying a small box that had eight caterpillars (for $40).  I was remembering all those hundreds of butterflies that flew in our garden in Tarikere.  I could appreciate my childhood experiences a lot more, given how much we had to travel and spend to get my son to see the butterflies.

We brought the caterpillars home, waited anxiously for them to gain weight and transform to chrysalis.  Two of them died within a week.  The other six managed to climb up to the roof of the box and hang upside down.  Of those six, two fell down within a day.  We took them out and put them on a plant, upside down.  The other four are still going strong and are expected to come out as butterflies anytime.  My wife, son and I have been following this metamorphosis very closely.  When I saw that the two chrysalis had fallen off the roof, I felt really bad.  And I started thinking about all the butterflies I had been cruel to, when I was a kid.  I added one more item to the list of things I should not have done.  That list is getting longer :-)