Wednesday, Oct. 07, 2015 - 12:27 p.m.
Butterfy Dreamland
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i don't fund
but follow a frog hatchery in the uk
that raises tropical frogs from collected jelly
some kinds are tadpoles
that develop under wet leaves in some mountain on a Carribean Island
The huge frogs of Monserrat mountains
are nearly extinct
because people eat them
The UK frog patrol
has struggled for a years
to find a few specimens way up in the mountains
and gather hard to find fertile eggs in season
and fly them back to the UK safely
tricky as heck to mimic
their quirky tropical habitat
and feed them in a frog lab
and make sure they are healthy
and eating and disease free
then they fly them back to the weirdo corner
they come from
and insane brits camp there
and guard them
till they fit in to the natural order
its a hard weird thankless job
but somebody has to do it
if i ever meet Ringo Star
and I might because he plays
at Casino Niagara every other year
and I know nhe slips into my town
because its old colonial
and white British culture
that is no longer a factor
in the UK
trhat is , understated blank and anonymous
i want to ask Mr ex beatle drummer
if its true if in the early 70's
he read about Brit grad students who raised
tropical butterflies
and their specific food plants in
their tiny london loft
and air mailed the cocoons back
to the collection zone for release
just for the heck of doing something grand
Ringo arranged to clear out
his estate greenhouses of ho hum show plants
and he let these students run their
tropical butterfly hatchery
scaled up 1000 fold- way back in the 70s
when nobody else was doing this anywhere
what they learned raising butterflys en masse
was applied to a South Carolina
butterfy conservancy built new
by some other rich public minded person
to feature a combination hatchery lab
- this was a big experiment in public eco art access
within two weeks asfter opening
it was so popular the SC people realized
they should have designed it three times larger
busses arriving every hour
to see the butterflys at play
The Niagara Falls butterfly conservancy
they were designing
to five fold the size they had planned
so they woul;d be under servicing demand
a month after opening in Niagara Falls
they found their enlarged was way too small
and are building a second larger butterfly
space whatever beside it
but its hard to get moiney for anything
other than hockey arenas in canada
nobody gets anything ever
Epilogue:
nobody had any idea a few caterpillers
in a fish tank woiuld be such a big deal
in the public imagination
I dreamed last night
I looked out a window of a highrise building
at a tree top
and there were large weird caterpillers
eating the top leaves
hundreds of them as birds flew in and ate them
I recognised them as wonderful tropical butterflies
in infant stage
that would soon be wiped out by birds
this treetop drama of extinction
played out only for me
I was anxious in my dreamland delght
wondering how to get the caterpillars down
so I could raise them safely
knowing they would turn into wonderful things
Only I recognised at that stage
nobody would ever help me
because nobody would ever understand
I woke up a disappointed in bed
without the caterpillars
but with two furry beings snooring at my feet
but I will meet the dept head in Govt
over winter who is responsible
for the Monarch count in S Ontario
a friend works in Conservation
and knows I bring Monarchs on from eggs
every year with some success
and saw my movies I made and posted on Facebook
My success rate is as good or better than theirs
and I am fun and have trained little kids
to egg hunt with me
who have gone off and run their own little seasonal hatchery release projects
I see their Moms at the market
who keep me informed
they might be kids
but they do a complete professional cycle
just like I showed them how to do
I would love to do a project with the Ontario Provincial
Monarch watch dept.
Just as the public starts to wake up and take some responsibility of shepparding Monarchs
and not fear or wait for someone else to do it
to help kids raise them from eggs
anything I have seen as
an educational aid to do this is lame
and paranoid and small scale hobby
Its not hard to do 50 at once
they are small and meek' and just eat leaves
cost is zero
set up is simple but strict
in former generations kids fed farm animals
to learn responsibility and compassion for the smaller creatures who depend on them
its no wonder urban kids are selfish bullies-
they don't have smaller living beings
depending on them
loving them back
revealing continuity and loyalty
in a meanigful non suckie way
Butterflys can fix all that
I can attest and document and show
oh well, I have cats to feed a mid day snack
they aleardy killed a mouse each on the driveway
i watched through the window
like Caesar at the Colluseum
watching lions rips up Christians
They will not be allowed near
the butterfliy hatchery
they have to learn compassion
some other way
