The Butterfly
by
Jane Killingbeck--
Last
night I was painting my living room, pushing the brush up into the
dark corners where the ceiling beams lodge into the stone of the
wall; there was a fluttering, and to my horror I realised I had
daubed a butterfly with paint… she must have been there dozing away
on the beam.
I
have many butterflies sit out the winter in the shadowy recesses of
this old house, and have in fact been liberating them as they come to
life and flutter at the windows on warm days, so it was no surprise
that a butterfly should be there, but I was overcome with remorse.
At
first I thought there was no saving her, but as she landed on the
floor in an ungainly way, I could see she was still very much alive;
I had not damaged her with the brush, beyond the painting of her.
And
then I remembered this is organic paint, which may not harm her
irrevocably, and maybe it would be possible to get that paint off the
poor creature; so I carefully cupped my hands around her, as she
futilely flapped her wings, and brought her to the kitchen sink.
I
ran the tap at a dribble, and found the soft paint brush I use as a
pastry brush; wetting it, I gently brushed her, and the paint began
to come away from her fluttering wings and then from her body... it
took time, and I was afraid of making her so wet that she wouldn't
recover, so it was all a matter of delicacy, of intuition, and of
luck.
She
was blessed; by the time I had finished she looked well enough, and I
left her on the warm storage heater in my sitting room, on a tea
towel, to hopefully dry off.
Which
sometime later she did, fluttering up onto my jumper, as I sat there
writing, at my computer.
I
was delighted indeed, and brought her over to the windowsill to perch
(do butterflies perch?) on the blackthorn blossom and primroses that
were arranged in the little blue Limoges vase my daughter had given
me for my birthday, safely behind the curtains, so that she wouldn't
kill herself batting against the electric lamp.
I
went to bed smiling.
But
that butterfly was seemingly ill-fated. This afternoon as I sat
drinking tea, and sunbeams fell glancing through the window onto the
table, I remembered the butterfly. I went into my sitting room to see
if she was still there. I found her, not on the flowers but on the
frame of the window, all tangled up in a cobweb; the doom of many
wintering butterflies, as there are also many spiders in my house,
and as fast as I de-cobweb
windows, they busily re-web
them.
So
again I went to the rescue: she was still alive and struggling, as I
gently pulled at the webs attached to her legs and feelers, which had
imprisoned her there at the window. It is all too easy to pull a
delicate leg or feeler off with the cobweb, so strong are those
gossamer threads, but finally a slightly tattered small tortoiseshell
butterfly with part of a wing missing (that must have been due to an
earlier mishap!) and still evidence of cream-coloured paint on her
wings, was ready to leave.