The Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

As a child, my sister and I spent countless summer days innocently engaged in the "sport" of butterfly collecting. Dancing and chasing the delicate insects through fields of daisies, black-eyed susans, and queen anne's lace with our nets crafted by our mother, we weren't thinking about the fact that a successful hunt would mean the demise of our prey. We just loved catching butterflies.

And today, I miss the Monarchs. I know they're not exactly extinct yet. But I also know that they are well on their way to that ignoble inevitablity that conforms to the law of entropy and someday even awaits humankind. Have you ever thought about life that way? We humans are famously self-absorbed and unself-aware at the same time! Yet, the day will come when our species will know what the Dodo bird, the Passenger Pigeon, and the Carolina Perakeet knew before us.

But I digress; today, the story was the Eastern Tiger Swallowtails. Such beautiful, grand butterflies, and they frequent my gardens throughout the summer. Their current obsession is with the monumental, poly-headed thistle that voluntarily grew in my circle garden to a height just shy of 8 feet! It's nothing to see three of them exploring the blossoms at a time. There were two, when I snapped this picture along with a bumble bee, a clouded sulpher butterfly and a fiery skipper. This single plant is a lepidopterist's fantasy come true!