According the the North American Butterfly Association it's getting more difficult with each passing year to find butterflies to count. Especially down here. According to a Miami Herald article, Florida "has the highest concentration of threatened butterflies" in the country. This is primarily due to climate change and the loss of habitat (either through climate change, i.e., sea levels rising into habitat, or development).
Nokosee told me once about the time he was a kid sleeping on a chickee floor hidden in a camouflaged hammock deep in the Everglades. He woke to a gorgeous blue butterfly dancing on his nose. He took it as a sign-- he's always looking for "synchronicity"*-- his "I read books" word for what his dad would have called an "omen."
I'm looking for both for our daughter Haalie. I want her to wake up one morning with a butterfly dancing on her nose and will see it as a scientifically proven omen that things are getting better.
For those who want to creatively bring attention to the butterflies-- and our-- plight (because one is connected to the other), please consider "putting on a show" using the free 10-minute family-friendly play called "Where is Bartram?"
*A word whipped up by shrink Carl Jung and physicist and Nobel laureate Wolfgang Pauli which attempted to meld the new discoveries of subatomic physics with psychology. Basically events have "meaningful coincidences" if they occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully related.