My Life As A Butterfly

 

I’m a com­pletely dif­fer­ent being now! Yet, I still remem­ber my cater­pil­lar life. These mem­o­ries allow me to take the lessons I’ve learned from one life into another. They help me to know that even though we might be much dif­fer­ent from one another, we really are all one.

May I tell you about some of my favorite parts in this but­ter­fly body?

My Eyes

I love my eyes. Espe­cially now that I have so many of them! Each of my big eyes holds thou­sands of lit­tle sim­ple eyes. These small eyes are in the shape of hexa­gons and look like finely cut gems. And each one of these thou­sands of eyes can be directed any way I choose! Up, down, back­wards, for­wards, to the left, to the right and every­thing in between. I can see in every direction!

I see where I am going. I see where I’ve been. And I see the world around me. All of this – and at the same time!

My Anten­nae

Bal­ance!

My anten­nae give me bal­ance, some­thing every being needs. With­out bal­ance, I’d be tossed about on every lit­tle breeze; I wouldn’t be able to perch on a flower petal or sleep on the bark of a tree. And because I have such frag­ile wings, it is easy for them to be dam­aged. Yet because of my anten­nae, I can fly and nav­i­gate between the flowers.

Smelling!

My anten­nae, along with my feet and my abdomen, allow me to smell. There are such sweet per­fumes we have in this world! In fact, we lady but­ter­flies make our own per­fume called “pheromones.” Male but­ter­flies love our scent. Some male but­ter­flies can smell our per­fume from up to a mile away. (By the way, those beau­ti­ful male but­ter­flies also make pheromones and they also smell very nice!)

My Ears

I don’t have ears like you, but I do have some really nice mem­branes that can sense sound. These mem­branes are like lit­tle drums along the mid­dle part of my body. When a sound touches me, I can sense where it is com­ing from and how far it is away from me. This can be very help­ful when a bat is try­ing to make a din­ner out of me! When a bat comes along, I can fly in a zigzag pat­tern in order to escape.

My Legs

How many peo­ple do you know who can taste with their legs? That’s what female but­ter­flies do. YUM!!! We have spines on the under­side of our front legs so that we can scratch the leaves, the stems and the flow­ers to get a taste of what we’re walk­ing on. This is extremely help­ful in select­ing just the right spot to lay our eggs. Since each type of cater­pil­lar can only eat one or two kinds of plants, we need to make sure we get our eggs on just the right plant!

My Wings

My glo­ri­ous wings are strong enough to carry me from one flower to another and some of my kind can even fly for thou­sands as miles. But I couldn’t do that right away. When I emerged from my chrysalis, my wings were crin­kled and sop­ping wet. I hung upside-down so that my blood would pump into my wings. Only until my wings dried out was I able to fly.

Now I have four wings, two forewings and two hind­wings. With these wings, my brother and sis­ter but­ter­flies and I can fly from 5 to 30 miles per hour. (The aver­age run­ning speed for humans is 15 miles per hour.)

And my col­ors! Pretty amaz­ing, huh? My wings look as if they are cov­ered in dust, but it’s actu­ally tiny col­ored scales. These are placed upon my wings in a pat­tern like tiles on a roof. How the light catches my scales deter­mines much of the bril­liant col­ors you see.

Would you like to hear what the sound of but­ter­fly wings? Click here.

Thank you for vis­it­ing all of my lives. Each one has been a bless­ing, as are each of yours!

Love,

Lil­li­bit