Entries tagged with crinklewing

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.

I've spend the last two-and-a-half days thinking about and trying to care for a butterfly who came out of its crysalis with a malformed wing. It's as if something got wrapped around the wing and pinched it. Here's the picture I took on the day I noticed it (two days ago):

That day was a sunny day and warm, a good day to enter the butterfly stage of your life and take flight. At first I thought, maybe it can pump enough fluid into that wrinkled wing to get it to unfold. But no, it couldn't.

So it was doomed. It was never going to be flying anywhere. Butterfly raising web pages told me I could make a pet out of it, or I could euthanize it (methods described, nothing awful but the concept was very depressing)--or, unstated, but clearly a choice, I could just leave it be, in which case it would die all on its own.

It was such a sunny day. This is life in the world as a butterfly, friend, I wanted to say. You can't fly, so your life is destined to be quite brief, but I hope you really love this sun. It must feel strange not to be a caterpillar anymore.

Then yesterday was rainy and cold. The butterfly hung on to its spot all day. I brought it flowers because one thing the butterfly raising pages said was you could offer a newly hatched butterfly an array of flowers. But it was too cold a day, maybe, for the butterfly to try to test out the flowers. And I don't know how long the nectar stays nectar-y after the flowers are cut.

Today is sunny (ish), and the butterfly was walking about a little. I read on the butterfly pages about making a honey-water or sugar-water mixture. Put it in a saucer and let them taste it with their feet, the page said. When they realize what it is, they will drink some, if they feel like it.

( two more butterfly pictures, with the flowers I tried tempting it with )

So I made some honey-water and held it where the butterfly could taste it, and it did taste it, and then climbed onto my hand--but when I lifted my hand, it fell fluttering off--but then gamely caught hold of a twig and started climbing up again. I tried again to interest it in the honey-water, and again it climbed onto my hand. I thought I'd carry it over to a stand of cosmos--then it could do the butterfly thing of drinking nectar, have another experience of life as a butterfly before it died. So I walked very slowly and carefully, and the butterfly sat on my hand, calm.

And then a big gust of wind came and carried it off, I don't know where. I looked around my yard, but couldn't see it. But I'm thinking, this means it even--sort of--experienced flight, a little.

I'm glad to have known this butterfly.

Meanwhile, I have a chrysalis on the siding of my house that's just about ready to hatch. I hope it will be healthy and able to fly.

the story continues

wrinkled wing