Sparkles in the Dust

"To survive today, other animals must endure global warming, pollution, and fewer habitats. More tragically, they must endure the silence of human hearts." -A. D. Williams

 

Every day I go for a morning walk, sometimes on the soft trails, sometimes along the road. I never can resist stopping to pick up sparkles on the ground that catch my eye. You never know. Once I found a muddy diamond bracelet in the gutter by the road.

 

The most exciting color of sparkles for me to find is blue. Isn't it interesting that a thing on the ground that turns out to be a beautiful blue flower is lovely to behold, but if it turns out to be a bit of rubbish, say, some blue candy wrapper tinfoil, the same exact sight is now ugly?

 

Today I see that little glint of blue, stop to carefully pick it up, and it turns out to be a rare treasure indeed. A dead blue butterfly. I look it up, and just as I suspected, this is an endangered species, the Fender's Blue, so rare that it was thought to have been extinct for decades. Or maybe not.

 

Then a small population was found living in a wetland ten miles away from where I found this one, thriving on a certain kind of wildflower. People began to plant these wildflowers, which themselves had dwindled in number as their habitat had been taken over by development.

What are the odds?! That I find this tiny chip of shimmering blue, only an inch across, from such a minute population that I could hold all the members of the species in the whole world folded up in my hand! Only the males are this bright blue color... And the animal exists in the butterfly form for only ONE WEEK! And they were early this year apparently, as it is not even the middle of April yet, and they usually come out in May!

I found this precious sapphire close to a park that runs along a creek. For years the volunteers who love the park have been pulling out invasive plants and restoring native vegetation there. Now I get it. For the shiny little treasure and thrill I got today, I just want to say thank you, volunteers!

"The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough."

-Ravindranath Tagore