Week 21: Butterflies and I ate a bug!!!

May 22, 2010

Well, I ate a couple of bugs. But I’ll get to that in a bit. Today’s adventure was a “peace like a river” adventure. (LC I wish you peace like a river.) I went to the Butterfly Bash as the Museum of Life and Science in Durham. The place was packed. I headed straight for the butterfly conservatory. It was so crowded that it was shuffle room only. The people cleared out shortly since most of them were waiting for the butterfly release to happen. How many butterflies do you see in the photo below? You can enlarge the picture by clicking on it.

There were more butterflies than you can shake a stick at. Now I’m going to digress for just a minute here. The phase “more than you can shake a stick at” first appeared in print in 1818 in The Lancaster Journal. Good ol’ Pennsylvania. The article read “We have in Lancaster more taverns than you can shake a stick at.” Now for those who aren’t from PA let me help you out here. It is not pronounced Lan – caster; it’s more like Lank – aster spoke quickly and not drawn out.

What I saw in the conservatory were hundreds of butterflies. None of them were native to NC or the US for that matter. I spent about 2 hours in the butterfly hut and took 100 pictures. That would be 1 picture every 1.2 minutes. Is that a lot? The butterflies were absolutely fantastical. For those who may not know, I absolutely love butterflies. I saw the most amazing thing with in the conservatory. I watch two butterflies hatch from their cocoons. What a beautiful event to watch. I even caught one on video tape. What a blessing to watch such a transformation!!! After I left the butterflies, I saw some beautifully color PIOSONOUS frogs. They also had cockroach that I didn’t look at. By now you know my viewpoint of those awful creatures. Ewww…I think my skin is crawling.

Now we arrive at the bug part. I ate lunch after paying with my left arm and right leg. I prepared myself by purchasing lemonade and I went to the bug sampling table. Two people were there deep frying crickets and sautéing mill worms. There was also an assortment of topping for these delicacies including chocolate, honey, hot sauce, and soy sauce. I took my cup of mill worms (about 10) and put a little chocolate on them. I took a picture, so you will believe me and then down the hatch they went. At first crunch, yes they were crunchy, it wasn’t so bad. But the aftertaste was sort of like dirt. Next I took a medium size cricket and put some hot sauce on it and then down the hatch legs, head, and tentacles included. At that point I decided that bugs don’t really have flavor, unfortunately hours later I still have this nasty aftertaste in my mouth. Yuck!

Now back to the butterflies. Apparently there are over 100 species at the museum. I didn’t see that many, but I think I’ll go back on a less crowded day. These are the one I saw that I know the names of:

Blue Morpho (Morph peleides), Postman (Heliconius erato), Paper Kite (Idea ieuconoe), Tiger Mimic (Tithorea harmonia), Scarlet Peacock (Anartia amathea) , Clipper (parthenos Sylvia) – This guy had just hatched.

Finally, there are 13 flutterbies in the photo. Have a “peace like a river” day!

Oh, ma and pa, on a side note: Can you bring down some Mallow Cups when you come? A big bag, I’m working on a job for the candy factory and people down here have never had a Mallow Cup.