gor[b] Paul Gorbould: Words and Pictures

Butterflies in the kitchen

It's hatching time. Well, it was last week - and now our kitchen is full of butterflies.

My wife is a kindergarten teacher, and one of her yearly activities is hatching butterflies in the classroom. She orders a few dozen painted lady butterfly larvae (caterpillars) from a science supply place called Boreal Labs, along with food and some small plastic cups.

Multiple exposure image of butterfly hatching in our kitchen

The caterpillars spend about a week fattening up, then climb up to the lids of the cups and spin a chrysalis. These get pinned or taped to the roof of a large clear plastic box. A week later, pop!  Out come the butterflies. They spend a few hours drying off and trying out their wings, flop around for a day or two, and then get released into the wild blue yonder. Great learning experience for kids.

Anyhow, this year we were shipped about twice as many caterpillars as needed. We gave some to my kids' school, and there were still about a dozen left over. My girls asked if we could hatch them in our house, and I wasn't quick enough to think of a reason not to. So there we were, with a dozen chrysalises hanging from under our kitchen cabinets.

Then it occurred to me that is was an excellent photo opportunity, particularly since I had just bought a macro lens for my camera. I set up the tripod and a desk lamp, and captured the series of pictures that became the montage above (naturally, the larvae I was trained on didn't hatch as expected, and the one beside it did. But I think it makes a nice series.)

We also recently put in a granite counter top, which made for nice reflections of the little guys when they dropped down on it. Painted ladies aren't the most colourful of butterflies - particularly resting with their wings shut (which is one of the ways you can tell them apart from moths.) But they are pretty cool up close, particularly those X-patterned eyes.

A newly-hatched painted lady butterfly resting on our kitchen counter

Get with the season

This morning I woke up to discover six inches of snow had fallen. And you know what that means....

Time to take down the Hallowe'en decorations!

My shame in yanking the frozen scarecrow from our front garden was matched only by the piles of unraked leaves churned up as I shovelled the sidewalk. I really was going to rake those, honest. Maybe if I put a little salt on them, they'll melt?

Still, I'm reminded that there are others that refuse to get with the season. Last week I saw someone in a similar boat, but dissimilar tax bracket:

It was -5 degrees C, and driving past me was a dude in a 65 Shelby Cobra (so the vanity plate said - could've been a replica, though). Top down (do those beasts even have a top?) No hat.

Big smile, though.

I regard this as a personal fantasy dilemma: If I had a 65 Cobra, and it was winter, would I drive it anyway?

Oh, to be faced with such a decision. Perhaps the owner of such a car will let me go for a ride if I rake his leaves, or shovel his snow.

At the same time, even.

Damned, dirty apes… and squirrels

I had a rare opportunity to work from home today - meetings cancelled, lots of text editing to do, food in the fridge - so I grabbed a laptop and looked forward to a day without the TTC (which has been almost unusable in the past two weeks, but at least they don't spit on their customers.)

Anyhow, I spent the morning hiding from the children, and in the afternoon when things warmed up I took the laptop into the backyard. I hadn't been there 10 minutes before I hear a crash and a howl from next door - squirrels were digging up Stephen's planters, and apparently he was dissuading them by throwing lawn chairs, or something.

Thing is, they weren't dissuaded. Instead, three of them climbed up a tree limb above us and started hurling debris down on our heads. I retreated to my laptop, and they came screaming along the top of the fence between our houses. One of them actually fell off the fence, and landed in one of my planters (to Stephen's delight.) Not wanting to fall behind the other two squirrels, this thing then ran right under my chair as a shortcut and rejoined the chase.

I guess he wasn't fast enough, though - he lost sight of them and wandered off in disgust (yes, I'm learning to read squirrel body language.) Moments later, the other two emerged from hiding, ran to the aforementioned planter... and started humping.

This was not five feet from my chair, and they took no notice of my shouts of "I'm trying to work here!" and "Get a room. Or a tree."

Somewhat of a distraction, but I've witnessed similar behaviour at CBC, so who's to judge. At least I didn't have to explain it to my kids.

Unlike last week.

My sister and I took the kidlets to the Toronto Zoo so my wife could bear down on her report cards, and the four of us ended up in the African pavilion, watching the lowland gorillas.

A crowd of children had gathered by one of the windows - one of the young gorillas had just sat down right by the window, in prime viewing location.

"Awwwww, cute!" said the kids.

And he was putting on a show, too - rolling around, and then actually standing on his head with his legs dangling in the air.

"Woweee!" said the kids.

And then, once everyone was watching his inverted form... he stuck his finger right up his ass.

"Ewwwwwww!" screamed the kids, as they ran away.

Be thankful there are no photos to accompany this post.

Dumb animals

A few days ago, we took down our myriad Christmas decorations. Seemed a bit soon, but they really were excessive this year.

"Bah humbug," I said.

"The house is naked!" our three-year-old said.

"Carry these boxes," my wife said.

Anyhow, I was removing our second tree, which was on our front porch, when I noticed this ornament on the ground.

Or, half-ornament. Some creature had pulled it off the tree and EATEN half of it.

It might be obvious to you that this is not a real apple.

You may notice that it is, in fact, a piece of styrofoam covered in gold paint.

You might think that after a bite or two, said animal might have concluded it was not in fact good to eat.

But no, they ate a full half of the ornament before abandoning it.

"Can't be worse than rice cakes," my wife said.