save whatever might be won from that immaculate camouflage. My heart goes out to
it. I have witnessed much of the creature's life cycle, marvelled at the development of
caterpillar and then chrysalis, shown it to appreciative visitors, sung its praises amid
no-doubt amusing enthusiasm. I look out for it each day as I pass through to feed the
winter-hardened hens in their run, some way off from the shed. I fear for its chances,
conscious that it has already endured six months and more of this vulnerability, perhaps
to fail when seemingly on its home strait.
It is still a long way off from that home run. Early January to early May is still a
mighty long period. Incredibly, this creature spends in excess of ten months in its
chrysalis - most of its life is spent thus, just sitting, quietly metamorphosing, otherwise
not interacting with what is around it, save only through that camouflage. I fear,
because I know that, each winter, the wrens come ferreting through the shed, beady-
eyeing their way among the tools and clutter, and stacks of logs and bags of hay,
seeking out whatever tiny creatures might sustain them in their own desperate bids to
outlast the winter. I disturb them in their quest, and, each year, I happen upon the sad,
pathetic wings of the peacock butterflies which had sought to hibernate the winter
away in the dark recesses of the shed, only to fall prey to these persistent troglodytes.
I know the chrysalis to be all too visible, at least to my accustomed eyes, and I know
that whatever I might lean in front of the long-dead plant will not keep out a bird
which is all too good at getting into otherwise inaccessible corners. I could intervene,
I suppose: pluck the sprig and confine the creature - and perhaps inadvertently doom
its chances, if my neglect or ignorance causes unintended harm. Better, I think, to
leave it in its doorway: it has made it thus far, after all.
So, as I write, the chrysalis still clings to the remains of the plant that so far has been
its world. I know: I saw it just an hour or so ago, just inside the door from the snow-
covered wastes of the winter landscape, where the flight of butterflies seems
unimaginable - where the delicacy of insect activity can hardly be contemplated. It is
so savagely raw out there, and those nor-easterlies are frisking more snow on the wind
even as I type. That little chrysalis is so beautiful, both in what it is and in all that it
represents, a hint of life in a continuity of adversity.
I long to come the moment when I find, amid the vigour of springtime, that the chrysalis
has hatched its content, and become a husk just like the plant to which it has clung for
so long. Perchance I might even see the beauty of its former tenant, on the wing across
a flowery meadow that has come alive again. Orange-tipped male? More subtly-coloured
female? Who knows? And - here is the rub of unsentimental nature - it might yet be
that the beautiful chrysalis has spawned some tawdry parasite instead, no doubt beautiful
in its own right, but oh! what a disappointment after such a year-long anticipation. My
head tells me that this might be so - the statistical chance is quite high - but my heart
is set on the flight of a butterfly. I dream, and I hope.
16
Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 62, May 2010