The very humorous naturalist and author Redmond O’Hanlon was on a sandbank on the sting of a river in Borneo when tons of of butterflies began to fly in the direction of him and his journey companion and landed on their boots, trousers, and shirts, and “sucked the sweat from our arms.”
He watched them for some time – “there have been Whites, Yellows and Blues, Swallow-tails, black, banded, or noticed with blue-greens” – after which stood up and brushed them off gently.
He writes, in Into the Coronary heart of Borneo: “I walked away from my companion the necessary few yards and took a pee myself. While my patch of urine was nonetheless steaming barely on the muddy sand, the males of Rajah’s birdwing […] flew over and crowded down on it, elbowing one another with the joints on their legs, pushing and shoving to get on the liquid, the sensible feather-shaped marks on their black wings trembling barely as they fed. I started, prematurely, to really feel part of issues.”
This occurs a number of occasions on his journey – between the leeches and worms and catfish and fears of centipedes and extra leeches – butterflies consuming his urine, his sweat, feeding off his damp clothes as he lays it out on a rock to dry. It’s shocking, endearing: butterflies aren’t so tacky in any case.
I’ve solely as soon as seen a bunch of butterflies – I refuse to make use of collective nouns, all of them appear pretend, it’s not referred to as a “kaleidoscope of butterflies”, it’s not referred to as a “flutter” – take flight off a big boulder subsequent to a stream. I used to be strolling alone, simply out of sight of a bunch of adults, and whipped round to attempt to present any person. It appeared completely like magic. It was a really specific day; I used to be aware that I used to be altering, my physique stretching out from a toddler to a gangly teenager. I used to be getting used to it, I felt grown up, fairly lovely, stepping from rock to rock in a gown, introspectively crossing and recrossing the stream.
I started, prematurely, to really feel part of issues, too. We study butterflies once we are small as a result of it’s foreshadowing: you too will change. Then you’re instructed that if the mud on a butterfly’s wings rubs off, the butterfly will stay earth-bound and die. It’s a fable, and what looks as if mud is definitely scales. However it’s true that butterflies can’t exchange their scales: when they’re very outdated, they generally have clear patches on their wings.
However butterflies are an imperfect metaphor – an imperfect preparation – for what it feels prefer to dwell. They modify too completely after their caterpillarhood. To me anyway, life feels extra like being inside a pupa, liquified, key constructions intact, rearranging myself perpetually into one thing new. And feeling at all times, at all times, just a bit slimy.
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Helen Sullivan is a Guardian journalist. She is writing a guide for Scribner Australia
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Do you could have an animal, insect or different topic you’d prefer to see profiled by this columnist? E-mail helen.sullivan@theguardian.com
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