Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: My season got off to a weird start!, 0 by konkreteblond

konkreteblond wrote:
Ok...so I was on the phone and my husband started saying "pssst" and pointed, then started flapping his arms. Knowing he must be signaling there was a butterfly in my yard (woohoo!) I grabbed my camera and ran with the phone to see a Tiger Swallowtail!

Each spring they are usually one of, if not the first, of the larger butterflies to visit. It was really windy and it was having a hard time staying on the Scabiosa flowers and I was having a hard time getting a good shot of him.

So...as I'm just watching him, because he's a little too far for the macro, it flutters around and back to the same bunch then suddenly starts flopping all over the plant, up in the air, down on the ground on it's back, then finally back up in the air. WHAT?!?! I don't have my camera aimed and it was happening so quick. It finally got airborne but was sort of sideways.

I'm on my knees so I'm leaning trying to see what is going on and I see what looks like something hanging from it and some sort of white blob at the end. My stomach sunk and my head said "spider!" It landed on the ground and I ran and picked it up and it didn't even try to fly off. It would try to move and flip over and just kind of sit there. I put it inside in the cage and it hung to the side for a while but never moved. When I checked on it again it would crawl onto my finger but was losing that ability. I guess the spider had bitten it and it had paralyzed it's wings first because they couldn't move at all, instantly.

So....knowing that it would never recover and was dying a slow death that I feared was painful, I felt like it was much more humane to put it in the freezer.

Ok, now tell me that's not one weird story to start off my season!!! I looked inside the plant and saw a Wolf spider but I think there was a little crab spider that got her and that's what was dangling from her for a minute. BAD SPIDER!!!

I got a couple of pics then took it inside and put it in the cage. It clung to the side

This message was edited Mar 28, 2007 11:21 PM