It’s about the cabbage
white butterflies. They go crazy in
mid-September. Numbering in the
thousands, they come bouncing haphazardly through the bluebird sky. By late afternoon, the butterflies have gone completely
daft.
Yesterday, driving across
the North Valley on my way home, I encountered hordes of butterflies tumbling
across the highway from the surrounding alfalfa fields. They were blind with brainstem instinct. Singular in focus, maybe drunk on sunlight, the
cabbage white butterflies encountered their own slaughter on the highways. I cannot tell you how many dead butterflies
littered the highway or how many surfed into the grill of my truck.
Theirs is a quiet
desperation. Living as an adult for no
more than three weeks, but able to reproduce after only two days, they have
much to do in the waning days of our summer.
Here the come—flapping
toward the next generation or fluttering toward a grim end on the long highway.
--Mitchell
Hegman
In a way there are many of us, supposedly more evolved creatures, who are like your cabbage white butterflies -- singularly focused on just their own comfort and well being and apathetic to injustice around them. These people are fortunate if on their death bed they finally realize that they are all part of us -- the whole -- and that what each of us does in our lives eventually impact on everyone else's.
ReplyDeleteThe butterfly syndrome?
ReplyDeleteYeah swe humans tend to have the butterfly syndrome. Some become conscious enough to be able to get out of it and unfortunately some don't.
ReplyDelete