My Brush with Nature

This evening, as I was heading out to pick up some sushi, I noticed a woman and her teen-aged son stopped on the walkway of my complex. They were hunched over and discussing something. As I approached, the woman pointed to a beautiful butterfly that was lying on the walkway. I've never seen such a large butterfly; my guess is that the wingspan was about 6 or 7 inches long. The wings were brown, with purple and yellow circles on it. The butterfly seemed injured, and the woman used a stick to prop the butterfly onto a very large leaf, and scooped it up into the grass.

I then ran into another neighbor, who asked what was going on. I showed her the butterfly, and after a few seconds, it became more active and crawled down off the grass, across the walkway, and onto the grass on the other side of the path. We began to examine it, and my neighbor declared, "I think it's constipated." Sure enough, something was being excreted from the body of the butterfly. We continued to peek, and then I took a gander that perhaps it was laying eggs. I'm including a photo so that you can see the little white dots.

Unfortunately, by the time I got to my camera, the butterfly folded itself in half. I do have photos of it with an open wingspan, but they are on my phone, and I don't know how to get phone pictures onto my computer! Anyways, enjoy these shots (well, maybe not the
one with the eggs and/or poop)...l. I hope the poor guy (or gal, if it's giving birth) survives the ordeal.... I'm so glad we humans have doctors to help us through this stuff. Truth be told, as amazing and beautiful this butterfly was, I'm a little grossed out and feel all itchy now, like there's stuff crawling on me or something. I guess there's a reason why I prefer the city over nature.