![](\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3041\/2826739384_8e3107b4b8.jpg\")
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Originally published in the Northern Agrarian<\/cite>, September 2008.<\/p>\n In June a black swallowtail butterfly laid a single egg in the windowbox of parsley on our front porch. Several days later an almost microscopic caterpillar emerged and did what caterpillars famously do. When it left its patch of parsley to become a chrysalis we couldn\u2019t find it in the tangled mess that a seller\u2019s agent would call shrubbery, and we hoped for the best. The miracle of a butterfly is a clich\u00e9, but it\u2019s a miracle my daughter, who is four, hadn\u2019t yet witnessed, and she gave me daily \u2014 if not hourly \u2014 updates on the caterpillar\u2019s progress. And, really, it\u2019s a miracle that never grows old. When the aptly named \u201cParsley\u201d went off into the wide world we were all a little disappointed that we wouldn\u2019t see her emerge as a butterfly. <\/p>\n Then in early August another swallowtail appeared \u2014 and laid, this time, nine eggs that we could find. They had barely hatched when the butterfly was back to lay a dozen more. My daughter, of course, insists that the proud mama is Parsley herself, and she might well be, returning to her own safe nursery. Seven of the first \u2014 what do you call a bunch of caterpillars? A clutch? A litter? \u2014 survived, and this time we found all of their chrysalises, attached to forsythia branches, the underside of porch steps, and the vinyl siding. As I write this they are still hanging there, waiting.<\/p>\n Early in the summer, while eating dinner outside, we watched a nuthatch bring her several fledglings to the feeder I\u2019d hung from a sweetgum branch near the picnic table. My wife remarked that she had seen a nuthatch at a park and none of the women she was with had ever seen one before. I was baffled; we\u2019ve always had nuthatches. I don\u2019t think of them as rare or extraordinary. <\/p>\n But nuthatches, like woodpeckers, nest in dead wood \u2014 in rotting trees, broken limbs, old woodpecker holes, or holes they\u2019ve dug themselves in soft wood. And in the urban parks and suburban yards where most people see birds, there aren\u2019t any dead trees. Once a suburban tree has ceased to be pretty, it\u2019s removed like the day after Christmas, before it has a chance to fall on someone\u2019s house. Even dead limbs are quickly pruned, lest they crash through a windshield. Decay isn\u2019t ornamental, and in crowded conditions it\u2019s a liability. <\/p>\n So although nuthatches aren\u2019t threatened with extinction, they need habitat that most people can\u2019t see from their front porches. Which is a shame, because they\u2019re pretty birds, and fun to watch, especially in late spring when they brought their young to our feeders. The juveniles, still fuzzy and awkward, buzzed in close to check us out while their mother fluttered impatiently from another tree: Get a move on! That part of the life cycle, like the butterfly\u2019s emergence, is attractive to us humans. But it depends on another part of another life cycle \u2014 the slow death of a tree \u2014 that most of us would rather not have around. <\/p>\n Nobody wants a tree to fall on their house, but the aversion to dead trees isn\u2019t all practical. The great dead oak just beyond my back fence, which long ago lost its limbs and most of its bark, seems beautiful to me \u2014 towering against the sky, a relic of decades past refusing to fall, reverberating with the insistent sounds of woodpeckers \u2014 but I expect I\u2019m in a minority. If a kindergartener assigned to draw a tree slashed this single line of brown on the paper, it\u2019s hard to imagine the teacher\u2019s reaction \u2014 a talk with the parents? Therapy? Your daughter draws dead trees. The correct Platonic tree has spreading branches, flush with leaves \u2014 unless in winter, but even then we focus on the twigs and buds awaiting warmth. Dead trees aren\u2019t pretty, and they remind us of things we\u2019d rather not think about.<\/p>\n I notice, too, that while there are plenty of photo essays and children\u2019s stories on the internet about the \u201clife cycle of a butterfly,\u201d they chronicle only the period from egg to winged emergence. We don\u2019t see what happens to the adult butterfly after she leaves the dried-out chrysalis and flies away. Nor do we see what happens to the mother after she lays her eggs. If, indeed, it was \u201cParsley\u201d come back to our porch, we know what\u2019s going to happen to her. When she laid her last eggs, her wing was torn. Butterflies don\u2019t live long, and she was near the end of her life. Soon enough, she\u2019ll be dead \u2014 eaten, perhaps, by one of our juvenile nuthatches, all grown up now at the end of summer. <\/p>\n Before summer ends, though, we\u2019ll enjoy this last burst of new life \u2014 the happy, charismatic part of the life cycle, a reminder of spring before fall sets in. The butterflies should start to emerge in a few days, and it will be time to plant more parsley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The miracle of a butterfly is a clich\u00e9, but it\u2019s a miracle my daughter, who is four, hadn\u2019t yet witnessed, and she gave me daily \u2014 if not hourly \u2014 updates on the caterpillar\u2019s progress. And, really, it\u2019s a miracle that never grows old. When the aptly named \u201cParsley\u201d went off into the wide world we were all a little disappointed that we wouldn\u2019t see her emerge as a butterfly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[4],"tags":[201,370,400],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8I1ci-3Y","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidwalbert.com\/dw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}