THIS ON THURSDAY
05.28.26 | #55
Hi Reader,
It may be because we're on vacation and I'm letting my mind wander more.
Or, maybe it's because our family found ourselves marveling over this beauty who landed, and stayed, in the fire pit we gathered around one morning. But I've been thinking about butterflies.
This orange beauty was the first, but over the next hour, somewhere around 20 others came. Many sizes, many color variations. And they stayed.
Finally, each floated off to somewhere else but not for quite a while.
It seemed odd. Beautiful, but odd. What was the allure of charred ash?
One of us said it was probably our family's magnetism that drew them. This made for a good family laugh.
The other brother pulled out his phone to research whether or not there could be another reason. This led to two things:
The first thing
The first was his research found that butterflies ARE drawn to fire pit ashes. It's called "mud-puddling" and it's a process that allows them, especially the males, to extract minerals (like essential salts and sodium and potassium) that flower-nectar diets don't provide in their diets.
But they cannot eat dry ash so the addition of recent rain or even dew allows them to suck the minerals up through their proboscis like a straw. Then, males pass these nutrient packets along to the female during mating.
The second thing
I found myself thinking on the Maya Angelou quote about the marvel of butteries:
"We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty."
Okay, three things
Life, in all its forms is endlessly fascinating. We miss so many of the marvels of nature because we often don't take the time to question things like a gathering of butterflies.
And maybe our lives are all the more beautiful due to all the changes we undergo. Some challenging, some outright difficult.
Like the butterfly.
๐ฉท Create a life you love.
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