Rescuing a Butterly by William (Carol’s grandson)
The entire first half of last September was dominated for me by something I had never done before. I tried to rebuild the damaged wing of a monarch butterfly I found in my backyard one afternoon with her left forewing torn in half. She was flailing about in the grass, trying very hard to fly, unable to comprehend why she was going utterly nowhere. It was heartbreaking.
After a few hours of introduction between us and me doing a lot of brainstorming, I found the tattered remnant of her missing wing in the grass. I then spent the next two weeks caring for her while I reconstructed her wing and reattached it to her body. I fed her, kept her warm, and told her my life story along the way. It was an experience unlike any other.
Butterflies are very fragile; I learned much about the engineering of their body – the limitations I couldn’t stand to see but had to find a way to work around. In the end, after many prototypes, test flights, and repeated surgeries, I had given her the best reconstruction that I could, designed to last as long as it could.
During the last few days she was with me, she flew further and further, longer and longer, higher and higher. It turns out that butterflies overwhelmingly rely on arbitrary air currents for sustained flight especially when crippled. This little monarch was learning more and more about catching those air currents when she caught one that took her up in the sky, across the field, over the fence, and far away into the unkempt backyard of a neighbor. And then she was gone.
And that was it. I couldn’t catch her and bring her back anymore. It was emotional. I wasn’t ready. I could only hope I had given her flight back long enough for her to be a normal butterfly again.
I learned a lot from all of this: a lot of mechanical things to get the job done and a lot of emotional things. “Titans make mistakes, too,” is what I said to her when her reconstructed wing failed and needed a redesign. “Titans cry, too,” is what I said to her when she was getting close to flying away.