Butterflies Aren't Free

You know that friend you have who is the one you always end up having adventures with?  I hope you have such a friend - if you don't, you should find one.  Of course for me, that's Mitch - but you've already met.

Wednesday is the Big Day, when I get the keys to my apartment and move in - the day that Mitch and I are driving two carloads of stuff from Jessica's basement up to Chicago.  That will be another adventure, I'm sure, but in the meantime I'm staying at the beautiful home she just bought on Old Mill Road, across from Foster Park which for you non-Fort Wayners is a lovely older neighborhood with stately houses and neighbors who know each other.  I've been helping her unpack a bit, which seems only sporting since she's moved me twice in the past fifteen months. (Saturday was actually the one year anniversary of my moving into the wonderful little green bungalow near Lakeside Park).

One thing you don't know about Mitch is that she is a Containment Officer for a Federally Inspected Facility.  Is that cool or what?  That means that for a few months every year she gets to put up (and enforce) signs like these:

Mitch runs the Botanical Conservatory and they have an annual butterfly exhibit, with butterflies from Africa and Asia and Central America, among other places.  These are what those of us in the industry call "exotic" which means "not from around here."  The problem with living creatures who aren't from around here is that they can carry parasites and diseases which also aren't from around here, and therefore can wreak havoc on the environment around here if they happen to get loose.

(Exhibit A:  the emerald ash borer, which rode in on untreated pallets from China and has been steadily marching outward from the Port of Detroit like Sherman through Georgia, if Sherman had been an evil little bug that killed ash trees.  Of course, in order for us to ship something to China, you have to use treated lumber and get certifications and stamps and all manner of annoyances, but apparently they are allowed to send us whatever the hell they want and we just deal with it.)

Okay, deep breath.  Thanks for giving me a moment.

Anyway, that's why, if you go through a butterfly exhibit, you will (or at least SHOULD) go through multiple doors.  If one of the little butterflies gets free they have to write up a Federal report on the matter.  It's a Big Deal, and given that no one really knows what were to happen if the parasites or diseases got loose, such caution seems appropriate.

And Saturday night I got to help.

A recent shipment of butterfly pupae came in with parasites.  Bugs, to be more specific.  Nasty little things that look like over-sized gnats.

Oh, let's start with a brief refresher - butterflies start, of course, as caterpillars and then become pupae, many of whom look like edamame.  Here are some (pupae, not edamame):

But they're not all green.  Some are brown and some are yellow:

The process is that you place these little fellas on boards until they hatch into butterflies.  Unfortunately, because the previous group was infected, Mitch couldn't put the new batch into the same case and they didn't have a separate case available until late Friday night.  So on Saturday evening, Containment Officer Mitch needed to go in to work to catch the bugs from the old case (which has to be done after dark - pretty cool, huh?) and place the new group of pupae into the new case.

Look at me!

We were working in The Lab, which meant that not only did I go through two doors into the exhibit itself (like the rest of the public - one of whom left a bottle of pop sitting on a bench because he or she was a complete idiot) but then through another special door where only special people like Mitch and me get to go in and don lab coats and booties:

And then into The Lab itself.

Mitch had put me through some training on this - she does take it very seriously, which is good.  She said that there are only two ways that something leaves The Lab.  First, it's a butterfly that is inspected for parasites and then it only gets to go as far as the exhibit tent.  Second, it's doused with bleach and put in a sealed container that will be bleached again and then incinerated.  Being in The Lab at this point and clearly not being a butterfly, that made me a little nervous.  Then Mitch said there is an exception for human beings, which I very much appreciated.  But that's why we wore the lab coats and booties, to reduce the likelihood that something will ride on us out of the Containment Area.  (So you see that the pop bottle left by the idiot will need to be bleached and incinerated, too.)

Our first task was to get the bugs.  For this, you want to use a suction gun and the one they'd ordered wasn't going to be in until Monday.  Mitch didn't think that the butterflies would last that long so one of her staff found a toy gun, designed to let kids get bugs, I guess, and we were going to try that.  You want it dark and then turn on a black light to attract the bugs.

Sadly, the suction on the toy gun was completely inadequate and we only got a couple of the bugs using it.  Luckily, however, the bugs were large enough to be seen and were incredibly slow-moving (we industry professionals would say "their motility was very low" but I don't want to be talking over your head, since you haven't had the benefit of my training and experience).  Therefore Mitch was able to save about a half dozen butterflies which she placed into a mesh container after making sure that they didn't have any bugs on them.  Later in the evening, I got to free the butterflies which, since they don't want to move at night, is harder than you'd think so Mitch had to help.

Mitch said that I could be the Sanitation Coordinator which meant cutting up the shipping box and spraying bleach all over it before putting it in the trash can.  I felt very special having a title.  Before long my performance was so exemplary (which meant that I finished cutting up the box without hurting myself or anyone else) that she promoted me.  One of the pupae was moving around already, trying to get out of its little shell.  They seem to have an easier time of it, Mitch said, if they are hanging upside down so I got to hold him for about twenty minutes until it was time to place him on the board.  I was like a Butterfly Midwife.

Isn't he brave?  Mitch said she wasn't sure whether he'd make it, since he started to hatch while in between two cotton pads in a FedEx box, and that I shouldn't get too attached to him.  Still, I had to cheer for the little guy, and when we left he was still wriggling his way out which was a good sign.

This is what Mitch was doing:

She pins them at the very end where they have spun some silk, so don't worry about whether she's stabbing them or anything.

Oh - here's a pupae that was about ready to start breaking out.  You can see the wings (which are blue and yellow) through the shell (which is clear).

Here are a couple of pictures of what the cases look like:

This first picture is of the butterflies that had the parasites.  The blue tape is to seal (or, as we Containment Professionals would say, contain) the parasites.  Here is a picture of the case that we filled up with my friend and his buddies:

They'll hang there until they break free, then they will, Mitch said, be very drippy as part of the process of their wings hardening, so she had me put paper towels on the shelves.  At that point I started to consider myself a Deputy Containment Officer, although the paperwork on that hasn't gone through yet.

Butterflies only live for a couple of weeks.  Mitch said that this is their rock star period, where they mostly get high and, um, reproduce.  I asked her about the getting high part, since I had seen no evidence of drug paraphernalia in the exhibit.  She said that all they eat is sugar.  Okay, I get it.  So go enjoy, little butterflies.  Livin' the dream.

Speaking of rock stars, we were treated to a variety of DJ Wedding Classics while working.  (It is a Botanical Conservatory and it was a Saturday evening late in the spring).  Of course they played Everybody's New Favorite:  Gangnam Style.  (It's funny that two of the "must plays" at family friendly events are a Korean rap song and the 70's gay anthem, YMCA, but there's no accounting for how culture adapts.)

Then we went out for dinner, although I avoided anything that looked like edamame.

It's always fun to do something completely different, and even better when that something helps save a little life, even if only for a couple of weeks.  It is better still when that something is a perfect metaphor for one's own life, although I'm anticipating mine lasting for more than a couple of weeks.  Plus I can add Sanitation Coordinator to my resume.