Operation Butterfly Rescue!

We took a short walk on the beach a few weeks ago when it was a cold, rainy, blustery day in October. As we beach combed, we came across a monarch butterfly that we thought was dead. But when we examined it closer, they had only been blown off course, their wings wet and heavy, and were unable to recover in the drizzle and wind. My practice in these cases, and what I did for this little fellow, was to carry them up the beach a bit, dig a hole, with one wall higher than the other to protect him for the wind, and place him in. now protected, they can stretch and dry their wings, hopefully to recover and fly on.

A few steps on, we came across another and repeated the process. And a few steps on, another. So we decided to take a different tact, and the next 3 butterflies that we found we put in a little bag that we were carrying, being careful to hold the bag open as not to crush them. Out of the three we brought off the beach, one was pretty bad off, two were pretty active.

We weren’t quite sure what we would do with them, and where we would put them, but we decided we would take them all the way home and put them in our greenhouse. At least it would be warm and dryer in there!

Unfortunately, when we checked on the butterflies the next day, the worse off one was already dead. The other two were perked up a little! We hoped that they would eventually feel good enough to fly away. We left them on their on own and checked back a few days later.

When we went back we found one, passed on. but hopefully the last of the three flew off!

Was the butterfly rescue a success? Probably not really. But I felt good knowing these three creatures got to be out of the wind and rain a bit.

We seem to always go to lengths to save wayward creatures (just the other day I took a praying mantis off a car in a parking lot, before it drove away with the mantis as unsuspecting passenger). Is this a common practice?