Arboretum Diary

"Just why the prairie plants stood up under the grazing by buffalo and elk, but now succumb to cows, is a mystery. Perhaps the answer is barbed wire, which keeps the cows too long in one place." – Leopold, "Roadside Prairies"








Just how much history the old prairie empires of Wisconsin upheld for their end of the evolutionary bargain is awfully hard to say, but as Leopold points out, unfortunately they didn't stand much of a chance up against roadway encroachment, the thorough blade of the till or boxed-in conditions of the hungry cow. At Curtis Prairie we can see how nature would prefer itself, a system of biota tightly woven together, each species expanding, contracting, dominating, or submitting to the course of water or nutrients, creating for us, at the very least, a visual display "unlike books, which divulge their meaning only when you dig for it, the prairie plants yearly repeat their story, in technicolor, from the first pale blooms of pasque in April to the wine-red plumes of bluestem in the fall."  The near eradication of prairies is a story that might have been written by the fate of expansion, but it is one that has more chapters left to write. If not for the preservation of a few of these remnants, we might not have had the historical archive to see and study but because we do, 'restoration' no doubt needs to be a common theme of this century: "we have thousands of miles of roadside, the outside edges of which are often too steep or rough to mow, already fenced against cows, and kept cleared of brush to prevent snowdrifts. Most of this potential prairie garden is being faithfully stirred up by roadside machinery, after which it goes over, for keeps, to quack grass and sweet clover. Why not let these edges alone and replant them to prairie?" It is the work of a lifetime of the likes of Leopold to try to get passers-by to consider a prairie or a farm something other than the flashing image that is seen by car driver. The massive passing images of monoculture corn are seen as symbols of feeding the world and let pass. The technicolor of the remaining prairie something of an oddity, a sort of painting by the hands of concerned citizens. To reverse the logic, one might see the lost acreage and topsoil of corn crops as potential for proper rotation or carbon farming permaculture; the prairie not as exotic gem, but as should be.  Sometimes the old is mistaken for the backwards and left for dead by the modern. What is a more novel thought, and one that sees forward, might come to think that in some cases the past is the future.

Arboretum Diary

"These are my suggestions for the farm arboretum: Tolerate foreign trees when they behave, but admit only natives to full citizenship. Let the arboretum be not a single segregated spot, but all odd corners where the soil fits the needs of some tree. Attach ten times more value to the tree that came in on his own steam than to the tree you had to plant." – Leopold, "The Farm Arboretum"





A swift walk along the more narrow paths cutting through Curtis Prairie is an exercise in quick picture taking. Even if rain has not fallen in some time, the Prairie here holds a handful of little creeks that fill-in the heart of the undergrowth and therefore serve mosquitos as one of the greatest foliage hideouts known along any of the five lakes shorelines. Wear long clothes, spray, or move quick to create your own breeze, which you can only hope replicates the real thing. At points there will be need to stop and take the picture that you came for in the first place and you may have to sacrifice that last uncovered square inch of neck flesh for the sake of tuning in the iPhone camera selection.  Near the east end the Orange Jewelweed is any interesting catch. Orange pouch like flowers hang from stalks "like so many windsocks," says the author of the Prairie Plants of the Arboretum.  Looking further into the data, located as it is along one of the more subtle streams of low-growth creeks, the Orange touch me not, or Impatiens Capensis more technically, is sitting right where it is supposed to be, in its "odd corners where the soil fits the needs of some tree."  Here is as good a spot for the novice prairie puzzle solver to stop and appreciate what it means to actually restore a habitat, prairie in this case, but that could be applied to virtually any disturbed, encroached or saturated parcel of land in one's home state: what fits this soil type, and will it thrive here as it once might have, and in fact belongs.  This very concept is one of the more amazing features of the restorations here – the foresight of seeing that a parcel of land has been extremely disturbed (think Leopold's own Sand Co. farm), to research what grows well in like-situated parcels, then plant and watch the co-evolution of plant and habitat do the rest of the work.  The Orange Jewelweed is said to be "abundant throughout, on stream banks, lakeshore, marshes, fens, swamps, wet thickets, moist spots in upland woods, around springs and seeps, ravines, and ditches; wet or damp soils."  At this point, I now know that when I see the orange windsocks, either it was planted by accident -- not very likely -- or it is thriving because of good wet earth. I now know that when I am near the plant that "Bumblebees, honeybees, and the ruby-throated hummingbirds appear to be good pollinators." As such, I would champion the native plant, knowing as I do that bees could use all the help they can get a time when their standard fare has been eradicated or sprayed.  I now know that its namesake, jewelweed, makes as good of sense as butterfly weed, one of the great feeders of Monarchs, but threatened in the state of Wisconsin.  So much to see with one click of the camera.

Arboretum Diary

"One of the best ways to preserve prairie flowers in a wild hay meadow is to reserve an unmoved strip each year, rotating the location of the strip. This enables each plant to go to seed occasionally, and incidentally improves cover for prairie chickens and pheasants." Leopold, from "Wildflower Corners," from For the Health of the Land





8/28

Nearing the end of summer seems like a good time to begin thinking again like a prairie. Spring comes and the eye is dazzled by the new palette of color replacing the cardboard monotony of late freeze.  This is a time to ask what has grown well in the prairie, what are strategies for this next spring? Leopold was a master strategist, always thinking as if inside the mind of a farmer who he wished would take in similar account for the varieties not only of growth beyond the cash crop but for the sake of game management to come.  This was a holistic approach to farming before the term was in play and today, as readers seek solutions to the fact that topsoil erosion accounts for half of all climate change contributors, the concept has been renamed for a larger scale: carbon farming, a process in which the farmer can reclaim her land, and consider how to re-preserve carbon in the soil, by proper rotation, silviculture pasturing, horizontal moisture planting, etc.  In other words, common sense, repackaged in different terms, and a little more gusto for we now know that we are on a specific timeline for transformation. It leads me back to the simplicity of the recommendation above, for 'wildflower corners,' possibly the simplest way a farmer might have for beginning the long slow process of preserving soil and simultaneously lending a hand to pollinators, who lose habitat daily by encroachment and pesticides.  My assigned plot this past summer for the Monarch Butterfly Monitoring Program was a small four acre parcel inside the Albany Wildlife Area, essentially a mono crop and hunting area in southwestern Wisconsin.  The 4-acre  parcel had been set aside as a 'wild flower' corner and stood out, along the roadside, as a near jungle of diversity up against the green stalks of the cash crops.  Milkweed was abundant. All other wildflower standards, like the yellow cone, brown-eyed, field thistle, purple prairie clover, etc. were abundant, and the non native in sparse appearance.  On my last trip through the prairie I spotted 19 monarchs either in flight or nectaring.  The experience would be something like walking through a distinct 4-acre plot that was lined with redwoods, while all the surrounding area in sight was shrubbery.  It stirred up some awfully common sense. What would happen if every farm had its own 'wild flower corner?' The fact that it could be rotated, as Leopold suggests, would mean that the alley way of new growth wouldn't dictate future plans for the farmer.  In the meantime, save a portion from the same spray that eliminates the milkweed which eliminates the butterfly and bee.  Does such a preservation need a subsidy, or is it possible that the land ethic, as incentive, is enough? As I walked the Curtis Prairie this morning, a wild three-prong Rough Blazing Star reached out over the narrow trail.  Shooting out of the predominate big blue stem and late summer goldenrod, it looked just like its name, a meteor of purple wisps and seeds. I wondered, how long had that particular shape and function take to co-evolve with the moist soil of the native prairies? Somewhere in that line of thinking, I wondered if the wild flower corner was a way to preserve time itself, the physicality of species, the origin of color, the invisible attraction between it and the butterfly?

Arboretum Diary

"Science has not yet arrived on the Gavilan, so the otter plays tag in its pools and riffles and chases the fat rainbows from under its mossy banks..." – Leopold, from "Song of the Gavilan"










8/27


We find out most of what we know about nature at the edges of things – the edges that we walk past along the trailside leading to Picnic Point at Lake Mendota, where the planting of a prairie, as it lunges out into the trail, is most certainly there, but what is inside? In the other direction, the great edge of the shallow bank of the lake, where soft sand leads to hard rock for several feet as far as we can see but most certainly gouges hundreds of feet deep beyond at shelves around the lake. Invasive buckthorn and basswoods serve as the green surroundings with the occasional pine climbing high seeking its own share of sunshine in soil that it is not always kind to its species.  A short walk at Wingra Savannah is the city edge of things, a boardwalk trail system that passes by one of the great springs bubbling out of the sand, preserved to roll along as a creek into the manmade pond that its itself at the edge of the Lake. The edges of things how we get to sneak a peak into the daily idiosyncrasies of the natural world. Take a few hundred steps off path along Monroe Street and there is a wide cut-out of grass that leads to a stand of dominant goldenrod which serves as a sort of gate to the pond. Behind, the harsh crackles and roars of steady course of cars, a helicopter above in the background, maybe a jogging party collective footfall along the asphalt trail. Yet, in nearly undetectable waves, the quieter footfall of the grasshoppers come into play and it is no longer a mere visual feature but a city habitat – it doesn't take much.  Geese slowly move through the muck of the pond below and deeper yet, not visible, the quieting chorus of a few fall birds on the island shore. Only months ago, along this same path, nature had taken more of its share as the songbirds arrived and the foliage around the boardwalks were still toe high at the edge of things.  Soon, the muffler of sounds, snow, will take over those same edges, but for the adventurer also offer up a path across the frozen pond and onto land otherwise unknown. What is the view like at the other side of the island, when the city is no longer visible?

Monarch Chronicles

"Flowering forth, a tall rice ear
stands proudly above the mass,
a shape eluding its shadow,
its sound refusing echoes."  – Lu Ji, "Ordinary and Sublime"








7


Monarch at island's edge of pond
lures me into the mown grass of park
where the goldenrod stands forth,
a choir singing to sun silent notes.
As I stand for no more than a minute
the stalks are no longer barren rods
but teeming by young grasshoppers.
A damsel like a blue arrow sheathed
in between two drooping leaves.
A dragonfly lands in the foreground,
it's abdomen a replica of the dying
stem it lands on no longer yellow.
It flies off, circles, then lands over
and over again facing my direction.
It rolls its eyes upwards stilling
its proboscis. Then back down
to business waiting for me to take off.

Monarch Chronicles

"The river of stars is one eternal color.

Empty cold pours through the mountain pass.

The front courtyard is white dew

and chrysanthemums secretly drenched with dark."

  – Du Fu, "New Moon"

6.

The back house courtyard is walled

by the plantings of King Tut grass and peonies.

Every day at full sun our Monarch

comes snooping along the side herberium,

pecking at the oregano and rosemary

as if testing the soft and warm aroma.

At night, when home, its silhouette too fast 

to cast a shadow over the river moonlit.

  

Monarch Chronicles

"Sometimes words come hard, they resist me
till I pluck them from deep water like hooked fish;
sometimes they are birds soaring out of a cloud,
and I harvest lines neglected for a hundred generations"
   – Lu Ji, "Meditation"







5.


An incidental Monarch off in the distance
flitting from petals Compass to Compass
seeking the bold nectar of Zinnias.

The mind's eye is sweetened by the scene.
Dendrites electrified by the blazing pink.
The descent of the Monarch onto lush petal

like the trail of molecules flashing across
the broad unseeable bulb of the cosmos.
Words are seeds planted by stars.

Monarch Chronicles

"White gulls fly over the broad, rippling river.
Its pure water in deep spring can dye your clothes green.
Navigating north and south will make a man age.
Late sun stays a long time seeing a fishing boat home."
   – Du Mu






4.


There was a hawk stationed on the roofline.
She knew nothing of us as she perched and sunned.
The garden looked to be a stationary thing.
Milkweed at the Monarch way station glistened.
Zinnias, all art, teetered only to the bee's weight.
The vast prairie surrounding, our afterthought.
The three million creatures that thrived between
us and the woods everything but not mentioned.

Monarch Chronicles

"New rice not yet ripe in the field,
old rice all gone,
I went to borrow a sack
and hesitated outside the door."

   – Han Shan, 125





3

Cornstalks late summer sharp as blades
if you walk through the rows just right.
A childhood memory for many hiding
through the maze at random points.
You could stop, duck low to the open stalks
and set your feet in the mud and sand.
Like a butterfly resting on a milkweed leaf
you could see the coming feet then off.

Monarch Chronicles

"Among the saplings, a path revealed at dawn,
long grass blades wet from night mist."
   – Li He, "Thirteen South Garden Poems









2


Flat bed trucks pass the field at Zurfluh Road.
Wheels dust the field thistle that line the ditch,
a hundred colors but a blur and a long streak –
corn on the other side must be rich if green.
As I Pollard Walk through the transect
of the middle of the field I find the world again.
Bumble bee nibbling at Queen Anne's Lace.
Antenna so precise I could sense a molecule.

Monarch Chronicles

"A wheat season rain swells brooks and field.

Sparse bells echo from an ancient temple.

Broken moon hung over a far mountain." 

  – Li He, "Thirteen South Garden Poems"

1

Albany Wildlife Area still cricket-song

along the roadside cornfields midmorning.

Seventy-two in the shade, a dry field

breeze renders mosquitos homeless.

This is a lone Wisconsin prairie grassland

Untouched by tractor or trapper alike.

I count nineteen Monarchs, shards of sunlight, 

clapping at the tilted prairie thistle.

The Fourth Instar

"What am I doing here? Wendi glared in disgust as he slowly began to dig the crumbly earth. The ground was surprisingly soft and light and without any heavy rocks or stones. More like dust than dirt, Rendi thought. He looked across to the barren plain of stone left by the missing mountain. 'I guess all the stone is there.'" – Lin, Starry River






8.

Crandall's father had learned long ago in his field research that pollinators such as the Monarch butterfly would need assistance from people if they were to continue their great generational migration from the sacred fir forests of Mexico all the way up to Canada.  When you worked in fields and along roadsides for a living, many things didn't come as a surprise. Monarchs were losing their ground, literally. They were a more delicate creature than many knew. There had been a time when the Monarch could have wintered in relative peace in the great warmth of the fir and then, over several life spans, made their way north up long and continuous corridors of welcoming habitat. Butterflies need nectaring plants and eventually must settle onto milkweed to begin the process of transforming from egg to adult butterfly.  But milkweed is often gotten rid of.  It is mowed down, it is replaced by lots for houses or large business that so often form at the outskirts of large cities and turn what was once an easy stopping ground for butterflies into nothing but cement.  This was not a new story but what was a new story was the decline of Monarch numbers both in Mexico and migrating northward.  Crandall's father decided that he would test his theories of recreating such a corridor of hospitable migration of butterflies by restoring a field of his own. He wanted to see if when he replanted an old cornfield with wildflowers and milkweed, if the Monarchs would seek it out as a safe zone.  If so, could he begin the long process of recreating an interlinking corridor, state by state, expanding south and north? He sat in the upper deck of his small boat he had named Starla, after his daughter, and pondered these same questions.  First, his own field must succeed, then to sell his idea to state agencies, maybe cross the nation.  He looked out over the shoreline of Lake Monona and scanned the small crowd at the beach quickly but didn't see Crandall. The park was very large. He set on his boat to scan the shoreline.

The Fourth Instar

"At night, the sky remained moonless, and the mournful sounds, as much as he tried to ignore them, kept Rendi awake in his bed. He gritted his teeth in frustration. How many nights had the sky wailed? How long had be been in this village? Would a new guest ever come?" – Lin, from Starry River







7.


As they walked through the second set of glass doors and into the conservator, Crandall was not sure that what he saw in front of him was real.  Up and down, two floors of green trees and plants that he had never seen in the fields and shorelines of Madison Wisconsin.  One tree dangled long pink flowers the size of his hand.  Enormous ferns stood along the walking path and created what looked like a tropical jungle.  "They especially like these sponges," the girl said, obviously quite familiar with the display.  Small tray stands held a variety of bright colored sponges that obviously held something very sweet.  Two butterflies laid along the sponges motionless. "A Common Buckeye," she said pointing at the first. "Look at the eyes on the wings." By the now the rest of her family had quickly made their way up along the walking path to the wooden box. All around butterflies flapped, dashing to and from small plants and flowers. Many had found perches along the base of the windows in the sun.  Crandall knew that his father would like to see this place and he now felt a little bit of guilt for not telling his father where he had gone off to even though he was just across the street. "I should probably get going," he said to the girl, a bit overwhelmed by this place, this small jungle full of butterflies. "If you get down on your knees like this," she said, bending down to the floor to look at the wild orange Julia, "you can see why these are brush footed." Crandall squatted down also near the sponge stand. The two butterflies that had landed there sat virtually motionless. He quickly asked how long they lived, wondering if they might have died.  "These two wouldn't be dead," she said. "Most only live 2-4 months, but some can live up to 11 months.  Some of these in these in the exhibition might have a good long life. They might die of boredom before anything else," she said with a smile. "They use their back legs for movement, but look at the front feet, they are nearly motionless. Look really close and you will see there are scales on them. That is how they detect a good egg-laying site in the wild." The creature was quite unbelievable, Crandall thought, up live like this right in front of his very nose and not trying very hard to fly away as it seems they often do in the fields. "You know a lot about butterflies," he finally said out loud, rising up to his feet, still quite anxious at this point to leave. The rest of her family was still above along the walking path talking about near the wooden case. "Well we are butterfly travelers my dad calls us. We have been to Mexico to see the wintering sites. There are trees down there that Monarchs gather on so thick that you can no longer see the wood.  They are called sacred firs." Crandall could tell that she was about to say a little bit more about this, but that she held it back. He wasn't sure he wanted to know more just at the moment.  The girls went ahead with a little more anyway. "We believe that we have found out about a new species of butterfly." As she said this, she looked around the room, something like a spy, seeking overhearing strangers hidden in the tropical plants. "We think one of them was sent here to Olbrich Gardens by accident. That is what we are doing here right now," she said excitedly, her eyes beginning open wider and wider as she spoke. Just then her little brother tapped her on the shoulder from behind. "We are going to keep going up to the top they said. It's time."

The Fourth Instar

"The sun's first rays reached out and touched the rooster. In its light, the rooster turned a radiant golden color with a comb as bright and as red as a burning flame. When the villagers saw this, they realized the sun was coming out, and they cheered as if it was a grand celebration. The sun, now hearing so many friendly sounds, was pleased, and it came all the way out of the mountain." – Lin, Starry River





6.

Crandall had been digging in his pockets for the money to get into the Blooming Butterflies for only a moment when the young girl had come up to him and handed him a flat five dollar bill. "We could see that you didn't have enough money.  We wondered if your parents were coming?" the girls asked.  She had to have been a similar age to Crandall, a bit taller than he was, dark brown hair, pulled back behind the ears and wide brown eyes.  What stood out immediately, though, directly against the noon sun coming straight down on them at the outside of the entrance vestibule, was a very small and sparkling butterfly that looked painted onto the side of her cheek.  "Ah, well, actually, my dad knows that I am over here. He is right across the street. Over there" he pointed to Lake Monona, "on his boat. I come over here all the time. He lets me." He stopped digging into his shorts pockets now. His instinct was to never take anything from somebody he didn't know, but he could not help himself at this moment.  The allure of the butterflies inside, the allure of this family kindly offering him the five dollar bill.  "Ok," he quickly said, not knowing what else to say, "I will pay you back someday, for sure." The girl unfolded a sort of long poster that looked to be a list and pictures of various butterflies.  There were crosses written through most of them. "We are here to find Julia."
"You are here to find a girl?" he asked innocently.  "No, the Julia butterfly, another brush foot, same family as the Monarch but like all orange.  They are our favorite.  Have you ever seen one?" Crandall certainly loved them too, the butterflies, but would never claim to be an expert as his father might claim to be an expert of plants and wildflowers.  He assumed most of the large orange colored butterflies were Monarchs. "I really don't think so," he said, as they began to walk in together through the doors and into the building towards a the exhibition marked by butterfly stickers on the floor. "What grade are you in?" she asked. "My name is Julia, by the way. That is part of why we are so excited to see it today."
"I'm heading into sixth. I'm Crandall. It's a weird name but it comes from my mom's maiden last name. Not a lot of Crandalls out there I guess."
"It would make a great name for a new butterfly" she said.  At that moment, the rest of the girl's family began to wave her nearer to them. The introducer was beginning to narrate the tour and warn against watching for butterflies on the way out and resting on the floor inside.  "Come on along with us Crandall," she said. "We will find the Julia together."

The Fourth Instar

"'I want to hear it' Peiyi said. Rendi was eager as well, for there had been few tales told in the dull Inn of Clear Sky, but he flushed when he saw Madame Chang looking directly at him. 'Would you like to hear it?' she asked. Wendi tried to shrug indifferently. 'I guess,' he said." – Lin, Starry River







5.

There was nothing that Rosario would not do for her family's small portion of the ejido here along the very western edge of Veracruz. To the east, from their perch along the foothills of the highlands, you could see the far off horizon of the great blue water.  Deeper to the west the scattering of the sacred firs, the oyamel, and beyond, deeper inland, the great Monarch preserves that she hoped to visit some day, by foot if necessary.  Rosario knew all about the Monarch butterflies.  There was a certain pride she took in the fact that such lovely creatures had chosen this very portion of earth to winter.  She had seen pictures of the flocks of millions of Monarchs that suspended so close as to resemble a golden tapestry along the shell of the warm firs.  Someday she would visit those trees, live in them if they would allow, but for now it was her duty to care for the ones that had either drifted this far by accident this far east or for those who did not migrate at all.  It had been in the morning that year she had found the thing that endeared her to the butterfly.  She had been to the back of the homestead feeding the chickens and checking on their condition when she first saw the most unusual sight dangling off of their token oyamel stand along edge of the ever thinning woods.  So many birds had flown through this part of the land arriving from or returning to the sea that it was not unusual for her to dash into her father's workshed to frantically plea that he please "come see, come see."
"What do you see, what do you see?" the father would tease. The father was not annoyed by the plaints, but could always see in his daughter himself at that age, far more interested in flora and fauna of this magical place then the tasks at hand.
"This bird has such thin wings. We have never seen such an orange!" The father had put his furniture making tools onto the counter. The room smelled of sawdust, the home made shelves boiling over in various parts that would eventually assemble to make chairs, his own prideful product.
"Orange, you say?" As he walked out into the grass and sand he thought to himself if he had ever seen an orange winged bird before. Orange stripes, yes. Orange head? At some point, it is possible.
"Stop here," Rosario said.  "It had been fluttering before, when I got closer."
The great winged thing was still in its position.  The wings were the size of small hand fans and clasped together and then opened, revealing patterns of art that only the wildest of imaginations could ever come up.
"I will tell you this," the father said, re-focusing. "If that is a bird I am a penguin." The girls laughed at this. The mastery of it called up something that both exciting and quite fearful. Objects larger than expected always leave the mind of the human wanting. Both of them stood in their places for several minutes watching the majesty of this thin-winged thing flap. They walked closer, as anybody would, and, just as one more step approached, the thin-winged thing dove upwards, then slashed to the side, lunging seemingly five feet at a beat, then straight away from them, rising up into the perfectly hazy blue of the low sky.
"My dear, that was no bird, but a butterfly!"

The Fourth Instar

"Sitting down, MeiLan carefully placed the box on her lap and, with an air of grand formality, threw back the lid. Peiyi squealed in excitement and pleasure. Rendi was pleased too, for now the snails were saying PEIYI IS A." – Lin, Starry River








4.

If there was a better job at the Garden, Chase and Marie wanted to know what it was.  They had both volunteered at the gift store and both had been docents introducers to the Blooming Butterflies at the Bolz Conservatory several years in the past.  Now they had been chosen to handle what they called the "Chrysalis Mail." Every tuesday morning they would receive their cardboard box especially marked with a yellow perishable sticker. Inside, at least a hundred white envelopes marked by type of butterfly. They spent their morning together over a cup of hot green tea shuffling through the envelopes, opening them carefully, then just as carefully separating them out on a slotted orange dish.   They laid a string down on the table and began the process of glueing the tips of the chrysalises to the string, then securing the string to a wooden dowel.  These dowels were then placed into the hatchery in the conservatory. Visitors could walk by and watch butterflies emerge from their little pouches. The butterflies would  hang to the dowels sometimes for two days waving their new wings as if exercising muscles.  At some point the young butterfly would become agitated and begin to gently flit up against the sides of the hatchery and then they knew it was time to let them go into the conservatory.

One morning Chase and Marie had run across something very unusual, something they had never seen before. Not that that meant everything. Neither of the two volunteers were scientists by trade but instead they had always held a deep love of plants and gardens. Yet this particular package that they received was shaped differently the rest of the smaller four by four white packets. It was the size of the box itself, in the manilla envelope. It had weight to it but no sticker tag on it.  "I wonder if we should even open it," Chase said.  Mary Ellen, the project supervisor for that day, was out and the only others that they could ask were volunteers like themselves. To get the chrysalis out of package and into the hatchery was something of importance. Butterflies needed authentic habitat after the jostling of the mail travel.  "Well, we know something is in there. These come from butterfly gardens, right? So somebody had to have put this in the mail for a good reason.  What could happen," she asked. "A swallowtail flies out like a bat!" She shouldn't have used the word bat. The image was a bit startling to Marie. They stood together behind Chase's chair and were brave enough not to shake the package but let it lay flat, then flipped it to the crease opening and began to peel away.  Inside was the tip of the most unusual thing, a long piece of green finger the shape of a banana but certainly not that wide or that heavy.