A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger

Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident 

It is not difficult for me to get close to a butterfly unless I’m trying to take its picture. There is something predatory in the way I approach them with my smart phone. It looks suspicious. I only achieved this photo because he was obsessed by his flower. 

These species of butterfly and flower are both attracted to sunlight. The butterfly seeks the light, often flying high above the leaf canopy. They represent my part of the forest in the full, bright bloom of summer. 

My first guess at identification was wrong. He is neither a monarch nor a false monarch, also known as a viceroy. He has the markings, shape and color of a male tiger swallowtail, except for the swallowtail. One might think this disqualifying.  It is not. The tail may vary from quite long to almost non-existent. There are Eastern and Western varieties, which one must be advanced beyond the naïf stage to discern. 

They are forest dwellers, bigger than monarchs. They love pink or red flowers and are here lunching on beebalm, also called bergamot, horsemint, oswego tea or Monarda, after the Spanish author of a book on plants of the New World in 1574. It was used by Native Americans as a general antiseptic and contains chemicals used in commercial antiseptics today.

Tiger swallowtails have evolved a few protections, as birds find them delicious. Their caterpillars have two large spots on the top of their heads that resemble eyes, and emit a foul odor from an appendage that looks like a tongue. Birds mistake them for snakes. The adults resemble a poisonous cousin. 

The butterfly stage of the tiger swallowtail is about two weeks, which is also how long it takes for them to go through its earlier stages. This doesn’t seem very long to us, just as, perhaps, our life span seems sadly short to a three hundred year old beech tree. One can only conclude that life spans are as nature intended. If I have two weeks, living them as a butterfly seems lovely.