Who’s Out There? Butter Me Fly

The humidity of the Olympic Peninsula held the air low and grey. The sun was out, but the wetness stifled it’s flow. A roaring creek, that will be only a trickle in a month, flowed down the hillside, on its way to the Hood canal some miles below.

I sat in my beach chair, on the mountainside beach, next to chilled waters, my black pants keeping the mosquitoes from taking too much from my legs.

A butterfly landed on my left knee. Kept her wings vertical for a moment, in case she needed to lunge, but then relaxed and lowered her wings in a V like a solar oven to gather the morning’s warming sun.

Butterflies’ wings generally stay like praying hands when they rest while Moths form a protective tent.

I’d been wearing these pants in spurts for days across hundred of miles. In the record breaking heat, their purpose was just to keep the blood sucking mosquitos from torturing me.

Somewhere in those miles I gathered something she liked. Or maybe she was just tired of a long morning of gathering. Being that she was on my knee I couldn’t see what she was doing there with her little antennaed mouth. I could just see her moving every once in a while.

Her wings moved like a heartbeat in micro movements of air. The fine china wings looked like they’d break at the faintest touch, ending in torn paper edges. Her veins popped out like a long distance runner on a hot day. Her white stalked legs ended in wisps of feet. The underside of her wings like bark peelings, and the top sides like spotted persimmons in their prime. Her cylindrical body was hairy like a lion’s mane, and tip in yellow fuzz from her morning travels.

Butterfly wings are made from two protein membranes covered in thousands of tiny hairs and scales. And their normal diet is nectar, though some eat dead matter, tree sap or other organic materials.

This butterfly seemed to have a thing for black. A color not naturally found in a thriving forest.. It was more represented of death and decay. Maybe that’s what she sought.

At one point I couldn’t find her and I looked over the screen of my iPad, there she was trying to get to the top of my screen as if she wanted to make sure I got this story right. The slick surface wouldn’t let her check. My leg had stiffened from fear of moving and scaring her off, but she didn’t mind my periodic glances at her on the other side of my screen.

Such a juxtaposition, her in her birth suit, me with the techie gadget where words become digits, and go into the ethers, when I’m connected to that particular world.

When the warmth diminished, she flew to the sun covered gravel near my feet. Her legs white, like jicama stalks moving aptly over the rock strewn surface.

My legs were so happy they could finally move without bothering her now.

After a few minutes in the sun, I had to hold my legs still again. Still more foraging to do on this alien form. This time it was the bright orange sandals confusing her for something more delectable.

Like when a hummingbird stops at my bright purple pack, I felt bad I didn’t have something more satisfying to share. Something that would satiate her hunger.

We played this little dance, the butterfly and me, until she got bored or had had enough of my cottonseed world. But a Swallowtail immediately took over flying around my head, as if to say, write about ME! Now write about ME!

You think they know?