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MorphoAdonis — The Entomologist's Crisis
Published: 2011-12-22 21:00:54 +0000 UTC; Views: 220; Favourites: 1; Downloads: 3
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He watched him beat his fists against the clear barrier between freedom and himself. The young man knew the futility of the desperate acts. He felt the butterfly was staring at him, begging him, damning him, hating him, beating his forelegs furiously against the plastic.He cracked open the box to put more drops of poison in, hoping to make the process quicker, painless, when the butterfly slipped out somehow. Terror rose in his heart- The prisoner had escaped! Surely he would be after the life of the one who kept him caged!
Had that been the real prize the butterfly was after, he would have had more chance of attaining it than his actual goal; Freedom. Little did he know that his tiny prison was held in a slightly larger prison; his hopes were in vain. His jailer was a prisoner in his own right, and neither of them could possibly break out.
The young man grabbed his net and swung furiously for the escaped butterfly, and eventually caught him once again. Getting him back into the cage without letting out his sister was a challenge. In trying to work him back inside, the butterfly's leg got caught in the net, but he unfortunately didn't notice; With a sudden yank, he watched in slow time as the leg detached from its owner. His hands started shaking.
When he was safely back in his plastic coffin, the young man watched as the poison took over him, and his sister, watched them twitch and writhe, watched their arms and legs shake, and suddenly, simultaneously, they both broke into a frenzy of blind, desperate movement, flapping wings, blurring the box with their rolling, seizure like bodies, flinging themselves in every direction in the primal lust for unpoisoned air, for movement, food, and survival.
His stomach turned into a ball of knots as he watched them struggle, hearing the thuds and rustling of a flurry of wings and bodies beating against the walls, and he gagged. He vowed he would never catch a Monarch again. He regretted their capture. He would let them go, but they were both so terribly damaged it would be a cruel existence, short and horrifically painful. He poured in poison without discretion, and hurried to leave the room. He held back tears as well as he could, and tried to contain his shaking. Tears threatened his eyes and revulsion pulled at all the muscles in his body.
He returned after maybe ten minutes, to find them immobile, but still alive. By now, all he wanted was for them to be dead and out of pain as quickly as possible. He took out two plasticine envelopes, used to transport specimens, and without much hassle, carefully lay each butterfly into an envelope. He put the envelopes into a plastic bag, and took the plastic back to the freezer, and set them in there, putting a three hour timer. By the time he returned, they were both frozen solid, and quite dead. Relief came, but it was dampened by shame and disgust. In the next two weeks, he finished preserving and spreading the butterflies, and placed them into a glass case to see forever. They, his trophies of self-loathing and regret.
The young man never caught another butterfly again.
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Comments: 3
I liked this piece a lot. It was an interesting look into an entomologist's mind during the actual process of killing the butterfly, something I've wondered about when staring at boxes of pinned butterflies in museums. The description of the rather violent end of the butterflies was chilling and somewhat reminiscent of some holocaust films I once saw.
"His jailer was a prisoner in his own right" I would like to know a bit more about the prison in which the narrator is trapped. I envisioned it as a prison of the mind rather than a physical prison like that of the butterfly. Is that what you were thinking or is it an actual prison?
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I see. And please, be reminded; Some of this was just the narrator's psychological view on things;
Butterflies don't actually have pain sensors in their brain, so the only thing they actually felt was just instinctual panic. Not to mention, most butterflies die within a half-hour of being trapped in the killing jar. (In my experience.) That being said, it was a rather disturbing afternoon for me. It may have been because this species was particularly large.
And I see what you mean about the "jailer as his own prisoner" part, I can develop that a bit more.
Mostly, it's a touch on the adolescence of the narrator, and how he is a prisoner in his home, and completely dependent on his environment, unable to leave. As well as a literal nod to the fact that he is inside a closed room, a larger "prison" that the butterfly would be stuck in regardless of whether he escaped the box.
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Thanks for telling me that about the butterflies, I always kind of felt bad for them... Not really sure why.
I didn't consider the idea the narrator is an adolescent and therefore actually dependent upon and stuck in his environment. Thanks for bringing that up
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