The Circle of Life

On Thursday, after all the butterflies had hatched from their cocoons leaving behind spots of nasty redness, I decided it was time to let them go. With a 3 day weekend ahead of us I didn't want to come back Monday and find them all dead of starvation. So my class and I made the trek to the outskirts of the baseball field where we would release them into the wild.

I had the students make a circle around the cage and then I opened the lid. It took a bit but when that first butterfly made its escape into the wild I had no idea the amount of chaos that would ensue. Suddenly all 19 of my students were running after this tiny little thing and I thought for sure this butterfly would be lost in the stampede. I shouted, I begged, I screamed for them to stop chasing them. After all the work I had done for these blasted butterflies the last thing I wanted was for them to end up on the bottom of someone's shoes.

It was hopeless. As each butterfly left the habitat a group of students would disperse towards it. Hoping to catch it. The chaos did not stop until each and every butterfly was well out of the baseball field. With a sigh, I checked the bottom of my students' shoes and said a prayer of thanks. The butterflies had survived my students as far as I could see.

As I lined up my students, preparing them for a nasty talking to, I noticed some birds swooping down in the distance where I was quite certain some of our butterflies had flown. At that moment everything I had done for the last couple of weeks felt very pointless. I made a vow to never care for another insect again. Stupid circle of life.