The Butterfly Jungle

Butterflies are my thing.

Well, perhaps not the same level of “thing” as my grandmother’s level of “thing.” She lived in Southern California and had quite an extensive flower garden, which attracted all kinds of them; she collected and displayed them and probably knew the name of each. I know she had a lot of them! She would catch them with a huge butterfly net and after processing them (no clue as to THAT process), she pinned them to a large, six-foot tree limb she had installed in the corner of her living room. The first thing one noticed with they stopped by her house was this massive tree limb in her living room, covered in colorful wings. Morbid? Perhaps, but I thought it was beautiful!

Years after my grandmother passed, I had an opportunity to take my Spring Break in San Diego and heard about the Butterfly Jungle at the Safari Park. In remembrance of my Grandma, I had to go!

If you haven’t been there, they have a huge domed rainforest greenhouse that is open for several months in the springtime so that visitors can enter and admire the many varieties of butterflies. There is a two-step process, which includes an air-lock-type, fanned room that you have to go through to enter or exit the exhibit so that butterflies stay in. People of all ages, young and old, come from all over the world to see this exhibit; expensive cameras abound, and shutter clicks can be heard throughout the compound as people try to capture the beauty of God’s delicate creatures. Grinning here because all I had was my cell phone’s camera and I’m sure there were more than a few noses turned up at my photography efforts! Children ooh’d and ah’d at the butterflies and as the insects flitted from one flower to another, the children dragged their parents to get a closer look. I saw this little boy of perhaps four years old, squatting down in the middle of the walkway in his little boy jeans, peering down in wonder at this gorgeous butterfly that had landed in front of him. It did my heart good to see all the little ones so intent on the details that the butterflies possessed! His mother smiled as she watched her little one, and every mother around him, including me, smiled back at her as we all watched him sweetly checking out this little thing, perched on the walkway in front of him.

And then he stood up and stomped on it.

A collective, horrified gasp came out of every one of us mothers. His mother was mortified and snatched him up quickly and scampered to the exit. I’m sure she still remembers that moment and even though it has been over twenty years ago, this morning I’m still cracking up at the audacity of that little boy and how his mother must have felt!