messengers three

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Two days after writing “imago” (last week’s post, see here) my family and I went to the Ohio Bird Sanctuary for the first time. We met a blind Barred Owl named Winnie who looked more adorable than wise, learned that West Nile Virus can effect birds and was the cause of blindness and balance problems in multiple birds kept at the sanctuary, found out that the Red Shouldered Hawk that frequents our yard is probably hunting frogs in our pond (apparently, they love frogs), attended a keeper talk and met a Red Shouldered Hawk named DJ who was a total diva and drank up the attention of Her Public like nectar in a golden chalice. In the middle of the bird enclosures there stood a large bush with purple flowers on it that was absolutely swarming with butterflies. I wish I knew what the bush was because I want one for our yard. I have rarely seen so many butterflies in one place! Most were Tiger Swallowtails (the yellow and black striped ones, very common in Ohio), but there was one Monarch and one female Eastern Black Swallowtail, just like the butterfly we released the week before. Except, I hoped it wasn’t the same one (we weren’t far from home, so it could have been) because her wings were ragged from a fight. In fact, the number of butterflies with holes in their wings was about even with the number of uninjured butterflies. It was a bird sanctuary, after all; which made growing an irresistible butterfly bush seem kinda cruel, like me putting birdseed out in the winter with a ferocious lion of a garage cat who can leap three feet into the air from a sitting position faster than you can blink. Almost as soon as I noticed the Black Swallowtail she noticed me, and left the delicious bush for a moment to fly in a close circle around my head. I greeted her back, wondering if she really was Samantha, as my daughter had named our caterpillar before she hatched. Long journeys do tend to be perilous at times, after all.

But then it happened again, after we had left the bird enclosures and set off hiking the trails on the property with laminated sheets of a scavenger hunt for each of the girls and a marker for crossing out each item: mushroom, acorn, bird’s nest, animal tracks. We had just come through the woods and out into a sunny patch when another Eastern Black Swallowtail appeared (this one without battle scars) and fluttered right around my head before disappearing just as suddenly. Huh, I thought. What a coincidence, right? And then it happened again. On a different trail, across the marsh from the last butterfly, as we were walking along the river, a third Eastern Black Swallowtail (or perhaps the second one again, who knows) flew close by me. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise, not in alarm but in hyper-awareness. A triple visit from the very same kind of butterfly that I had just written about two days before? There are coincidences, and then there are MESSAGES. I was listening.