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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1461136-Butterfly-Feathers
by Rae
Rated: E · Fiction · Nature · #1461136
Little piece of fiction based on observations in Nature.
         Does it hurt when a butterfly loses the feathers off its wings? I always wondered this while I was saving the poor creatures from their shimmering graves of Davey Jones' Lockers, backyard style. While moths are suicidal when it comes to flames, butterflies seem to be the extreme opposite, instead prefering stagnate pails of water. Perhaps they get the ideas from the flowers. I always told my mother that flowers set bad examples.
         Somehow the tulips and marigolds of our garden never seemed overly encouraging. They brought to mind the more pessimistic versions found in Alice's Wonderland than any sunshiney version you'd see in an elementary play. I told mother this one day after perusing a small colony of yellow flowers.
         Logically yellow flowers should be the most sunshiney, I told her, but these flowers were just a carpet of weaklings. To me they should be called Pansy's instead of whatever their name is. In any event, they're inspirational enough plants if you happen on them in the morning or evening, but at midday they aren't half so supporting. Petals all pinched together, cringing away from the sun, not the least bit cheery. And their form if they don't get their way!
         In their aversion of sun they're constantly swaying in hopes of rain. If this liquid precipitation doesn't come what may you expect of such fickle flora? Why, they sulk of course. First they'll droop their leaves then their squinting blossoms ntil they even begin to look bruised. Bruised from lack of rain! How absurd.
         None of this depressoin seems to deter the bees, however I'm puzzled as to why they put up with the flowers' bad hygiene. Even I clean better than those flowers! I told mother. As soon as the bees put their dainty little feet in the flowers they become emmersed in the most dreadfrul yellow, sticky stuff. They then carry this dust around the neighbourhood while all the other flowers ignore the spreading mass. They, of course, being too caught up in their tragic, rainless existance. Eventually they give up all together and just dry to a crisp. Hardly motivational plants just up and dying simply because they don't get their own way. I told mother as much too, the look she gave me didn't make it seem as though she agreed though.
         Still, after thinking about such flowers it doesn't surprise me any longer that butterflies would rather face water instead of flowers. That and it's rather a large slap in the face by the miniature kites. A last taunt of "I can get water to quench my thirst.", something that the flowers have wanted all along.
© Copyright 2008 Rae (angierae at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1461136-Butterfly-Feathers