More to Life
The four stages in the metamorphosis of butterflies are from egg to larva, then pupa and finally to adult butterfly. All of these are living unless perchance they run into someone with a net who collects them – a Lepidopterist, sometimes known as an ‘aurelian’! Lepidopterology is a branch of entomology (the study of insects) and comes from the Greek for ‘scale’ and ‘wing’. If you were a butterfly, you should avoid them for they are likely to stick a pin through you and mount you in their collection, after killing you humanely … in a freezer! Whilst caterpillars have jaws and can bite back if threatened, a butterfly only has a long, curled proboscis, which is like a soft drinking straw—their jaws are gone and so is self-defence. Margaret Fountaine (1862–1940) was a Lepidopterist who collected more than 22 000 butterflies, published extensively and wrote a diary of more than a million words – that is a serious serial ‘Lepidopterist’. Imagine going through four life forms and the questions it might generate – who is the real me and will there be more to life after this next mutation?
- ‘No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new’ – Steve Jobs