The giant owl below was a worse off example, and it kept falling to the floor. One orange Julia in particular was a bit wrinkled and a little slower than it should have been, so when I found one child preparing to hand it off to another, I pointed out how its wings were not quite as flat as they should have been and asked them to be extra careful. We also had a few butterflies that hadn’t developed properly, but were strong enough to fly around and find food.

Good job.” A clipper near the frog pond … but not too near

Just after this, a boy about first grade came up, softly took me by the hand and led me to the object of his concern, a black crumpled object in a puddle below a misting fan. This emerald swalllowtail likely did not live much longer the varieties we bring in have life spans of only a few weeks It was battered but not quite dead, so I gently scooped it up and promised to put it in a protected area (which I did), and reminded them that the butterflies don’t live a long time, so this one might just have been 85 in butterfly years. Several of them called me over to look at an emerald swalllowtail that was motionless on a leaf. One advantage of having lots of small children visit is that they are quite concerned about the welfare of the butterflies. Not on the floor but near, upside down on the storage cabinet beneath the emergence case

Besides the obvious traffic hazard, the floor was a little chilly so I moved any butterflies that seemed inclined to linger there. We had a tough combination at Dow Gardens’ Butterflies in Bloom on Tuesday: lots of small children and lots of butterflies that wanted to hang out on the floor. It’s butterfly Twister! A fifth one was in the same feeder just before I shot this (of course) three of these are small postman butterflies

Small postman butterfly