Butterfly Catches Dennie Picking Blueberries
Blueberries, Butterflies and The Pig
Picking
blueberries one after the other under cloudy, but still sunny skies in a big
netted over blueberry patch on a beautiful hill in little ole New Preston, Connecticut!
Clumsy
hands induce little blue, green and red ones to fall to the earth and roll
below. Some others are already mashed into the soil. Big chubby ones go down
the hatch. Sometimes red, orange and green ones drop accidentally into
blueberry containers.
Chatter
comes from a couple of bushes nearby.
Two elderly ladies are bantering back and forth about their ailments;
their hubbies’ doctor visits; hospital care for everyone; and all available
medical treatments. The babble becomes annoying fast!
Picking,
picking, picking more blueberries! I’m not fast enough! Already Ina, the Mom
and my wife, has filled her plastic gallon drinking water bottle with the top
cut open. Mine is not even half full! As usual, she calls for my container to
check it and me out. I pretend not to hear her, and shamefully rush my fingers
into picking more berries!
Soon,
Ina moves over and takes control of my container, leaving me to pick from one
hand into the other before walking repeatedly nearby to dump the full hand into
the bucket.
The picking goes on and on! Will it
ever stop? Oh yes, the buckets both are almost full now, and picking under the
sun makes me sweat! For a second or two, my right arm, ready to pick, extended
straight out in front of me.
Suddenly a little orange butterfly with
miniature black specks flies speedily around me and lands right on the back of
my extended right hand! As it retracts its wings, I see the buff orange- brown
color on the bottom of those wings, and its two little antlers above its tiny
head, and its legs attached to its diminutive body. I glance at the little guy.
My outstretched arm and hand freeze. In seconds, the tiny one takes off and
flies up and around and then down again on the back of my waiting and frozen
right hand. This time it stays.
I wait
and wait! I marvel at this little orange-black spotted beauty. Nothing happens!
So, keeping my hand and arm outstretched in front of me, I walk slowly,
carefully along a couple of blueberry bushes.
I show off my new, flying friend-pet first to Ina, who tells me I am
just trying to avoid more berry picking.
I ignore her and move on to another blueberry picking woman nearby who
exclaims surprise, but little else. These relatively unenthusiastic reactions
are not at all satisfying! I walk out 75 yards of the blueberry patch while
continually looking at my extended right hand, the butterfly’s merger airport
pad.
The
butterfly briefly, during my blueberry bush-to-bush travel, has folded both
wings tightly together pointing skyward. Those two wings closed upward become a
two-sided pale brown-orange triangle.
As I
approach the blueberry patch’s wooden payment shack, I see a diminutive little
brown-haired boy rolling down a small slope in the grass toward me. A younger
pint-sized girl is standing nearby. The boy is laughing and having fun as more
grass and dirt cling to his short brown hair, his white t-shirt and his medium
blue shorts.
I say
firmly to both kids, but quietly: “Hey, want to see my butterfly?!” They look
puzzled! I repeat the question. My right arm and hand, holding the sitting
butterfly is pointing toward the boy. I exclaim: “Don’t move fast!” He looks at
it curiously, and of course, moves closer to me. Then, as I move my whole hand
slowly upward to keep him from scaring the winged one, the butterfly flits off
my hand’s posterior.
I look
upward. I can see it flying back and forth. It is about twenty feet above me.
Seconds pass! I then exclaim: “Hey! Look what you did! It’s gone!” Seemingly
within seconds, I hear Ina’s voice exclaiming a bit sarcastically as she walks
out of the blueberry patch: “It landed on your ear!” I immediately replied:
“Ha! Ha! You’re soooo funny!”
But
the little boy quickly cries out, “No it’s there on your ear!” My eyes tried to
veer a look up there, but naturally, I could not view it. However, I felt a
very slight sensation between my right ear and my hair. “Wow!” I thought.
“They’re right!”
So, I
walked slowly and carefully up to the blueberry payment shack. A middle-aged
woman was waiting there to weigh blueberry containers and assess cost. Below her lying on the ground were two
panting, medium sized dogs, one a blond Husky and the other a black and white
long-legged mixed breed. Proudly, I tipped the right side of my head very
carefully toward the cashier and asked: “How do you like my butterfly?!”
The
woman looked, smiled and seemed amazed. However, as the Husky got up from the
ground to greet me with tail wagging and red tongue sticking out of his mouth,
off flew the butterfly away into the sky forever! I looked at it disappear. A
bit saddened, I petted the Husky and his nearby buddy while Ina, ever the
banker, paid for the blueberries.
I
thought about this wonderful blueberry patch butterfly mate for several days
before an amazing thought suddenly occurred to me. Once before, about ten years
back, I had encountered similarly amazing butterfly interactions with another
man.
“Whoa!”
I exclaimed whispering to myself, after relating the two experiences in my
mind. “Butterflies can and do communicate and interact with people, if humans
have enough sensitivity to figure this out!”
Now I
will tell you that this close to a decade-old story is still relatively fresh
in my mind. But, you know that as the years pass, some details can become hazy
or exaggerated. Nevertheless, the true guts of this startling story are still
etched in my mind today.
That
earlier dream-like happening occurred, when, by chance, I met a locally
well-known Vermont character, an old,
white-haired man, inside the diminutive town of Barnard,
Vermont. We
both were lingering under the awning of the General Store and looking out onto
beautiful Silver Lake nearby.
There
were a few part-time porch and pavement below frequenters near us. They
included some old guys, young dudes and pet dogs of all sorts, jumping on and
off the porch and occasionally into and out of the lake. Across the street,
swimmers were just getting out of the lake’s cold blue waters onto the green
grass alongside. Others were still
paddling their arms and hands and splashing inside the nearby shallow portion
of a swim hole.
This
old white-haired character had been repeatedly seen for years walking up and
down the main drag of a road leading south to beautiful Woodstock
and north towards diminutive Bethel.
He habitually and repeatedly smiled and waved at passing cars, including mine,
without hesitation. I later learned his old ramshackle house was just off the
main road a mile or two north of the general store which is defined as the town
center.
Local
residents told me the old man’s home had burned to the ground years back, only
to be rebuilt by a kindly crew of volunteer townspeople.
So,
without warning or hesitation on this very sunny day, the white-haired,
winkled-face character sidled right up to my side on that porch, just feet
away, and, without introducing himself, began telling his story in a raspy, but
riveting voice.
The
other night, the dude said, he and a couple of other guys loaded a well used
pickup truck with a big, white, muddied pig. He began describing the wild and
crazy time they had inducing and pushing the pig up a plank to the bed of the
pickup. As he did so with his arms gesticulating in all directions, two
medium-sized white butterflies began flying several feet above his head on the
edge of the porch and underneath the slanted roof of the General Store!
I
don’t know whether he saw the butterflies or not, but he never once hesitated
in his story telling. In fact, as his story progressed, his arms moved around
zigzagging like butterfly wings.
The
pig was eventually loaded, he said, before he and another guy got in the truck
and drove off, I think, to a pig barn. I wasn’t absolutely sure of the truck’s
destination, because his chattered story became speedier and speedier as it
progressed. As the words flew out of his mouth, and he became more excited, the
butterflies’ flights became faster and more erratic!
Down
the road into a wooded area drove the two men with the pig, scrambling and
squealing inside the truck’s bed. But, because the porker, partially restrained
by rope, became wildly squeamish, they stopped and jumped out in a rush to see
what the fuss was all about.
It was
fortunate, because the hog by now had wriggled out of its moorings and was
ready to rock and roll! As the uncombed, white-haired, eccentric, but loveable
dude told his story, his long, unbarbered hair flowed from side to side.
Meanwhile,
above him the butterflies continued their incredible dance. Up, up, up in the
sky they went, only to rush back down to the porch, duck under the roof and
then lurch over the old guy’s head to match their movements with the gravelly
tale teller’s voice inflections. Sometimes movements became so dramatic, it was
hard to distinguish the flowing white hair from the flying white wings. I was
mesmerized!
The
two men lost control of the pig as they opened the tailgate to restrain it. It
slithered by them, with its body mud flying all over the place, and leaped out
of the truck, falling to the ground on its side, and squealing painfully before
righting itself and rushing into the woods.
During
the yarn, I didn’t know whether to watch the butterflies or the old man because
both were equally fascinating. I caught glimpses of the butterflies zipping
around his head, and once even out a few feet toward the lake before returning,
like they were in a magnetic field, to the airways over that wild, messy white
hair.
Now,
years after hearing the tale, I don’t really remember what happened to the pig.
I don’t think he escaped, but he may have. I do clearly remember this! After
the white-haired townsman’s lowdown ended, the butterflies simply flew away up
into the sky over the lake and disappeared. Amazing! Have you ever seen white
butterflies moving around the countryside? They never, ever seem to stop their
wild and jagged flight patterns in one location like they did that day!
