My Butterfly Rescue

The year I saved the life of a butterfly.

“Pull that one out and throw it in the dumpster,” my nursery boss told me, pointing at one of the herb plants.

I was watering the flats of herbs at the garden center I worked at, and as my boss, Evan, stopped to check on my progress, he spotted something wrong and instructed me to throw out the plant.

I looked closer to see what caught his attention.

A lone little caterpillar was perched on a stem, cheerfully munching its way through the parsley.

“But…but…we can’t…” I stammered. “It’s going to be a butterfly.”

“Doesn’t matter. No one will buy it now. And we’ve got to stop it before it damages more product.”

He was adamant.

The caterpillar had to go.

I was also firm in my resolve.

I wasn’t going to let the poor creature die. It couldn’t help it that its mom chose to lay her eggs on a parsley plant in a retail garden facility.

“I’m going to buy the plant. With the caterpillar on it,” I told Evan.

“Fine,” he begrudgingly agreed. “But put it in the cashier’s shack until you leave, so it doesn’t wander and eat up anymore.”

After I clocked out that night, I was the next customer in line, waiting to purchase four parsley plants, one of them my coveted parsley one adorned with the lovely green caterpillar.

When I got home that night, Dennis (my ex) was perplexed. “What in the world are we going to do with that?”

He had a point. I hadn’t thought through this part of the plan too well. At the time we were living in a 5th wheel, out on 4-acres, trying to save up some money to start building a house. There wasn’t room inside the 5th wheel to start caring for a plant, let alone four of them. I knew that the growing caterpillar would need more food than the one lone plant it was munching its way through. Plus, there wasn’t enough light inside to keep the parsley happy and thriving.

Outside wasn’t a good place for the parsley. Our four-acres backed up against the 76,000- acres of Fort Huachuca. Every night deer and javelina foraged through the property. Coveys of quails and lone roadrunners passed through several times a day, fighting over food with the rabbits. To contain a garden area, we’d constructed a secure fenced-in area with pallets and mesh screening.

Where was I going to put my parsley and the caterpillar?

Fortunately, Dennis was good with home projects.

And he was good at making things to keep me happy.

So, he built me a screened in cage, a wood-framed cage covered with window screening, that sat about four feet off the ground. With a hinged door so I could get in and water the plants when needed. We put the parsley plants in a larger pot and sat it in the middle of the cage, keeping the caterpillar — and the plants — safe from what would devour it the first night if unprotected.

It worked.

The caterpillar survived, thrived, and made it to the chrysalis stage.

A short time later, one morning I went out to go to work and the butterfly had emerged and was flying about in its unexpected little prison. I flung the door open, and with a quick wave of its wings was gone, fluttering about in the Arizona sunny day.

Now my butterfly rescue efforts are simpler. I merely try to keep the yard chock full of as many wildflowers as possible so that these lovelies have something to nibble on as they live their short lives, bringing beauty and joy to our lives.

The only thing I haven’t done yet is to buy milkweed seeds so I can plant those for the Monarchs. But hey, if I can buy four parsley plants just to save the life of one lonely little caterpillar, then milkweed seeds are going on my list for next spring!

After all, isn’t butterfly rescue like Lay’s potato chips — you can’t have just one!

I’d forgotten about my butterfly rescue mission back in 2007. I know I took pictures of the cage Dennis had built for me. I probably had pictures of the butterfly too, before releasing it. But that was three phones ago. And it was pre-Facebook days, so no images I can go gather from there.

Last week, Sherry Atkinson commented on a story I’d written, Day Trippin’, about my favorite childhood game — climbing trees and catching bees for pets. She wrote:

Tricia, perhaps we are kindred spirits! I loved catching, bees, grasshoppers, butterflies, and anything else, except spiders! And even though I didn’t have access to that many trees to climb, I did love climbing bloom when I had the chance. Thank you for taking me back to my childhood with you. ❤️

As soon as I replied to Sherry’s comment, her butterfly mention brought this memory flooding back to my mind. Thank you, Sherry, for reviving this memory and bringing it to the surface all these years later.