Young Writers Society

I had to write a piece which did not exceed 500 words, so that's why this is so short!

I have talked to science students, and still am not sure how long a butterfly lives. They are in agreement that it is not long; between a day and a month, depending on the species. Maybe that has something to do with the terror they elicit in some.

That sounds odd, I know. It seems natural to shudder at the thought of a spider, to jump on to a chair at the first glimpse of a wasp, but somehow a fear of butterflies seems unreasonable. Last summer, I spent almost three hours wandering around a Canadian butterfly conservatory. It was like a fairytale; a miniature jungle mere minutes from the car park, with thousands of different butterflies flitting freely around their vast enclosure. They fluttered as if frenzied, a whirlwind of colour; so many wings were flapping that you could almost hear them if you stood very still and tried to ignore the screams of children as they fled from zebra long-wings which flapped too close to their paling faces.

“Elaine,” whispered my brother, “I think there’s one on my back!” I circled him. A rather large one was perched beside his left angel-bone. Its wings were pressed together, so that only its brown underside was visible. Greg tried to look over his shoulder to see it. Shockingly, he proved incapable of turning his head three hundred and sixty degrees.

“Come on,” I told him, resenting his standstill, “let’s keep going. It will fly off once you start walking.” Surprisingly, it didn’t. It didn’t move a centimetre as we wove our way through climber plants and flowers, through perching and soaring insects, through hundreds of hanging chrysalises ,containing creatures which had a purpose before they had even developed fully. I had to signal for an attendant before we left, and have her remove it with tweezers. She settled it on a vine. It spread its wings. It was blue and green. It fluttered up in a circle, restless now. Perhaps it had wanted to leave with us.

I did not see a single dead butterfly. Perhaps the attendants were particularly scrupulous about removing corpses before the ethereal illusion could be shattered. My brother’s insect companion had been so fragile that it had to be removed with the utmost care-and still they flew, still they perched on adults and flew at children, as if they did not realize their fragility. Maybe the hanging brown and grey cocoons reminded them of their mortality-maybe they do only live for a day, and want it that way. When their bodies are removed and binned or pressed and pinned for preservation they will be perfect. Maybe this is us looking the other way while Nature blatantly shows us how she works, and maybe this is ok, until they die while they are perched on you. And maybe people run in fear of the brief life, of the inescapable death of the beautiful.