American Scientist

Adding butterflies to your life is like adding another dimension. The air trembles with the movement of wings. The approach of a White Admiral. The aerial dance of sulphurs. A Painted Lady. A Black Satyr. All this existed before, has always existed, but you were unaware. You didn't see. . . .

Butterflies became present in my life one summer afternoon by a river in New Mexico. A Western Tiger Swallowtail dipped by my face. About three inches across, it seemed much larger. Its lemon yellow wings were striped improbably and fluted in black. They filliped into a long forked tail with spots of red and blue. Smelling nothing of interest, the butterfly floated away, leaving me pleased and agitated, as though I had been handed a gift I didn't deserve. Could this, all along, be a simple truth: beauty without cause or consequence?

The Western Tiger Swallowtail was patrolling for a mate, avoiding birds, and on the lookout for nectar or carrion juices. Like most butterflies, it tasted with its feet and smelled with its antennae. Its genitalia had eyes, simple light-sensitive cells. It had been alive for a day. It might live another month.

Later, I became enamored with the tiniest of butterflies, thumbnail-sized gray hairstreaks in my peripheral vision, on a weed or a fence, common as a mailbox. But wait until they settle and show their underside. Scallops of mango orange. Patterns of blue and russet. A crescent, a dash, a language in code.

An Obsession with Butterflies: Our Long Love Affair with a Singular Insect
Sharman Apt Russell
Perseus Publishing, $24