Monday, July 11, 2005


The Monday Morning Butterfly looks a bit like a White Admiral resting on a prairie coreopsis.
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's a core of perception in the wool of a cliche. I had thought whoever authored the butterfly's wing triggering the hurricane was obtruding a showy and exaggerated discontinuity between cause and effect, in order to make a point about the decay of systems. But a Weidemeyer's Admiral took up a station in our hawthorne. He ignores the Cabbage Whites, but let another Admiral, a fritillary or a western swallowtail enter the garden and he is on the attack immediately, and runs them right out. He engages male broadtail hummingbirds, too, though they are undeterred and give him no shrift. And once when I was out standing near the hackberry, I felt a soft, decisive tap on the head; he was running me out of the garden. So now I wonder if the author of that metaphor intended a resonance I hadn't suspected. A Weidemeyer's Admiral will start a storm if any butterfly can.

7/11/05, 8:00 PM
Be said...

Macho games with a butterfly! That's so funny! In the city, we don't have too many butterflies, but we have plenty of songbirds who have no problem yelling at me when I invade their personal space. One guy sounds like a gosh-darned car alarm.

At "camp" in Maine, the chipmunks throw nuts and pinecones at us. I had one little guy (whose cohones I admire greatly) actually corner me on the wharf where I was sunbathing a number of times. My male human partner hasn't made the images available to protect my modesty (I'm a closet naturist), but he has the whole thing documented. It's really funny.

7/13/05, 8:24 PM

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