FutureWorld: everyday life in the third millennium

I like butterflies, especially the big 747 models with snazzy colors, like the monarchs and the swallowtails. But I also have a nice feeling about the simple dull colorless ones; they give a pleasant fluttery feeling to the day when you see them, and they seem pretty harmless. (As Bart Simpson once said: “No one ever suspects the butterfly.”)

 

For example: now and then I see cabbage butterflies, AKA cabbage moths, AKA Pieris rapae. You know them: the white ones that swirl and dart through the garden like animated dinner napkins.

 

My parents used to grow basketball-sized cabbages, and the cabbage butterflies loved them. They don’t eat them, you see; they lay their eggs in them. Then their children (green oozy-looking caterpillars) eat the cabbage.

 

My mother hated those caterpillars. She had a giant salt-shaker of some infernal pesticide, which she used on the cabbages the way you’d sprinkle Parmesan on your spaghetti. It certainly didn’t kill all the caterpillars, and I marvel that it didn’t kill all of us. (One of our neighbors saw her strewing poison on her cabbages once, and wrote a letter to the local paper about “my neighbor lady who sprinkles poison on her vegetables.” He also said something like “I’d rather eat a bug once in a while than poison my own food.”)

 

(We thought he was crazy. Forty-five years later, I see that he was ahead of his time.)

 

Mom’s poison didn’t seem to reduce the population of cabbage butterflies, as I recall. And what’s a summer day, after all, without a few cabbage butterflies wheeling and pirouetting in the sunlight? 

 

I suspect that, if I’d been born a butterfly, I’d have been a cabbage butterfly: not extraordinarily beautiful, but with my own quiet charm.

 

And I do like cabbage once in a while.

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Partner and I are planning a trip to Florida in October, which means (of course) Disney World. Partner has been there several times; I’ve only been there once, with him, in 2002. He pretty much had to drag me there, as I was very dubious about whether or not I’d enjoy it. 

 

Of all of our vacations together, it was one of the best.

 

I will limit myself to one recollection. We were walking in the Animal Kingdom – maybe through the India part – and suddenly an enormous butterfly landed on Partner. These butterflies, I don’t know where they get them, but they have an affinity for people, and they’re very tame; they will land on you with no fear at all. They are enormous and very beautiful.

 

They also grip you like bejeezus with their little butterfly feet.

 

It doesn’t hurt; it’s kind of like a very small pinch. But they are very determined not to fall off, and they make sure you know it.

 

As you can see in the above photo, we played with the butterfly for some time. It finally got bored, left us, and found a family with small children. It decided it liked the little boy best, and landed on his head. The rest of the family was delighted. “Oh my god Bobby! How pretty! Look at the pretty pretty butterfly!”

 

Bobby did not look as if he was entertained by this at all. He looked alarmed. You could tell that, while the rest of the family was enjoying the pretty pretty butterfly, he was feeling the pretty pretty butterfly’s claws digging into his skin.

 

I was a little afraid that Bobby might panic and squash the pretty pretty butterfly, but the Disney organization evidently trains the butterflies to know when they’ve reached your limit. It flew away at last.

 

On an old episode of “The Simpsons,” Bart announces that he’d like to come back as a butterfly. “Why?” Lisa asks.

 

Bart smirks. “Because,” he says, “no one ever suspects the butterfly.”

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