asakiyume | the story continues

When Crinklewing (as my husband dubbed him) was blown away, I thought that was the end of the story, and so I made the entry with that endpoint.

But stories keep flowing! So much of storytelling is about deciding where to begin and end your tale ...

Later that day, I found Crinklewing again in my yard. All through the day, I took breaks from work to continue what I described in the last post, taking him to different flowers, tempting him with sugar-water. As evening came round, he climbed up on my sweatshirt, right up to my neck! And then he fluttered off, back into the milkweed patch by my door.

Or so I thought: later I found him on my kitchen floor.

All right, friend, spend the night here in my house, where it's warm, I thought. I put him on a brightly colored piece of cloth on my ironing board and wet it with sugar-water.

proboscis out!

Today is another sunny day. I don't want Crinklewing to end his days cooped up in a dim indoors, so I decided to take him to a pollinator garden by an elementary school. It's a beautiful place, and he looked at home stretched out on a ... not sure what it is. [ETA: Likely Tithonia, also known as Mexican sunflower--ID courtesy of

pameladean--thank you!] A bright flower.

But I heard a group of kids and a teacher coming along, and I realized in this spot, he would be vulnerable to lots of people noticing him and possibly poking at him. So I took him down the hill to a wild spot with lots of goldenrod (which has delicious nectar beloved of bees and butterflies) and set him there. Lots of food, and warm sun.

As I came up the hill, one of the little kids greeted me. "Hi! How are you? What are you doing?" And I realized the group was a special ed class (not from the greeting, from other things). There was one child in a wheelchair with a screen for touching for communication.

I told the kid about Crinklewing.

"Can we go see?" the kid asked.

"Let's just look from here," the teacher said. "It's better for the butterfly."

That seemed to satisfy the kid. He and the others got busy exclaiming over the flowers, squatting down to look at things, asking questions--clearly learning and enjoying themselves.

All crinklewings of one sort or another. It feels too on the nose, but it's really what happened.