Saturday Sample: Butterflies by Jenny Palmer, homemade lemonade

It’s a mystery to me how they get in. I normally keep all the windows closed from September onwards. Yet sometimes in the middle of winter they’ll collect at the window, frantically trying to get out. This March they were particularly persistent. I opened the window as much as I could, without letting in too much cold air. It was still frosty outside. However much I coaxed them to exit, they just wouldn’t budge. They rested on the windowsill, fluttering about, hesitating, content to stay in the warm, for as long as I’d let them.

Red butterflies, it says on Google, are supposed to be a symbol of passion or a promise of years of happiness to come. I would happily settle for the latter. In some cultures, they are a sign of evil or danger and in Scotland they were believed to be witches in disguise. Other cultures thought they appeared when people needed to be careful and prepare for the unexpected to happen. Were these a sign?

 At first, I thought mine were Red Admirals, but Google claimed there are only two varieties of red butterflies that come into houses to hibernate: the small Tortoiseshell and the Peacock. The Peacock can easily be identified by the large spots on its wings, so they weren’t that. The small Tortoiseshell is often confused with the Red Admiral because it has black and white tipped wings, but it also has yellow stripes and is more of an orange colour than as red. I settled on that.

The small Tortoiseshell, I learned, enters houses in late summer or early autumn to hibernate for the winter when it’s still warm outside. Houses tend to be cool, sheltered, and dry and they’ll happily stay inside all winter, but the trouble is, when the heating comes on or the sun shines, the butterflies sometimes get tricked into thinking that spring has come early and are desperate to escape and start feeding again. Hence all the fluttering at the window.

Whenever I see a trapped creature, my first instinct is to help it escape. I’ll put towels in the bathtub so that the spiders can scurry up them, rather than be washed down the plughole. I’ll scoop up slugs with a shovel from the kitchen floor and carefully deposit them outside in the garden, even though I have a horror of slugs. I once untangled a sheep from the fence, when it got its horns stuck in the wire netting. I can’t stand feeling trapped myself. If I need to stay indoors for any length of time, I start to go stir crazy.

So self-isolation was always going to be a challenge. Of course, I took the government’s advice. None of us wants to die. If staying indoors would stop the virus spreading, then I was all for it. It was simply a case of replenishing my already well-stocked larder. I always have a two-week supply of food in the house just in case it snows. I’ve been caught out like that before. This time I planned to buy in some extra tins of soup and baked beans, and some milk and bread to freeze. I had enough of everything else. I wouldn’t need to be doing any panic-buying of toilet paper or anything.

The first couple of weeks would be a novelty, I imagined, a bit like going on holiday. I could watch all the programmes I’d missed on Catch-up and read all the books I’d never got round to reading. There were lots of jobs about the house to be getting on with, like putting up shelves for the extra books I’d bought, tidying up my papers into neat piles or sorting out clothes, ready to be taken to the charity shop. I’d keep in touch with the world via the internet. And there was always the phone if I felt like communicating with the rest of the human race.

To avoid being bombarded by the news, I’d restrict myself to one news programme a day and perhaps one programme with some analysis. To keep myself in the loop, I could try upping my Facebook usage, by liking more posts from friends than usual. It would be hard because I’m not a pet person and have never been able to understand why people insist on posting so many photos of their cats or dogs. And I usually avoid signing too many petitions on the grounds that they are presumptuous, and you get emails from them forever afterwards.

There are three stages of development in the butterfly: the caterpillar or pupa stage, the chrysalis, and the final adult stage. On average, the lifespan of the adult butterfly is only two weeks. In summer they live on the sap from trees or on fermenting fruits and nectar from plants. I knew there would be plenty for them to eat in my garden as I’d made a point of planting nectar-rich plants such as buddleia, sedum, and lavender to attract insects, although it was a little too early for that. 

It's a natural inclination for any living creature to be outside in spring. When I saw the butterflies struggling to get out, I couldn’t help but assist them. I gently wafted them towards the window with a newspaper, careful not to damage their fragile wings. It took a while. As they approached the open window, they’d just fly back inside again. Finally, I was able to release them and watched as they flew off in all directions. I’d done my good deed for the day.

Only later did I learn this is not the correct way to deal with butterflies that have woken up inadvertently in winter. What you should do is catch them, put them in a cool cardboard box where they’ll settle down and then re-house them in a suitable location, somewhere like a garage or an outdoor shed. There they’ll peacefully see out the remainder of their hibernation. Without nectar to feed on and with the cold, frosty nights that ensued, the ones I’d freed wouldn’t have stood much of a chance and would most likely have died of starvation or of the cold.

Me, I’m staying put for the duration, and focusing on keeping myself occupied until the coast is clear. I buy a newspaper, whenever I go out shopping, just to keep abreast of the situation. If the epidemic follows the normal pattern, the scientists tell is, it will peak in a few months’ time, and eventually die out. I hope I can hold out that long. The worst thing is not having someone close at hand to share it with, and the feeling of unreality that it engenders. But when I start to feel like that, all I do is remember the fate of the butterflies and the feeling soon passes. 

About the author 

 Before becoming a writer, Jenny Palmer taught English to foreign students both abroad and in London. In her spare time, she co-edited four anthologies of short stories published by the Women’s Press and Serpent’s Tail. Since returning to her childhood home in rural Lancashire in 2008, she has written and self-published two memoirs Nowhere better than home and Pastures New, two family history books Whipps, Watsons and Bulcocks and Witches, Quakers and Nonconformists, and a poetry book called Pendle Poems. Keepsake and other stories, her first collection of stories, was published by Bridge House in 2018. Butterflies and other stories is her second collection. These new stories have been published in the Lancashire Evening Post, on the Cafelit website, in the Evergreen anthology, and in Creative Mind anthologies. Ladybird and Health Check are in Best of Cafelit 12, and The Visitors 2 is in Best of Cafelit 13.

 

Find your copy here