beauty in unlikely places

suprisingly, eme discovered this moth in the grass the other morning. it's amazing to me that this creature wasn't trampled as the girls ran willy nilly about. she was so well camoflaged in a pile of leaves, that at first i didn't see her when eme pointed her out.



carefully, i would daresay reverently, eme picked her up (we didn't know she was a 'she' at the time, though). we all marveled at the texture, the coloration, the size, and the markings of our newly deceased find. at almost 7, lily acknowledged the beauty but was ick-ed out by the moth being dead. cate wanted to pet her. eme wanted to keep her for always (and bring her to the first day of school). i wanted to keep her, too. and really, with the 18 martha stewart shadowboxes that i bought at a huge discount a few years ago, i knew that i had the perfect place for her.

after a quick phone call to uncle (as per eme's suggestion...uncle has a gorgeous collection of butterflies that he had collected years and years ago), i settled our polyphemus moth (love that reference to greek mythology) into a shadowbox and arranged her wings. of course, i did have to put a pin through the thorax, but no pins in the wings...never, never, never. thanks to google, i discovered that we had to place and pin thin strips of paper over the wings to hold them in position until the moth fully dries out.



it is beyond amazing to me that wings so ridiculously fragile can bear a relatively large fuzzy little body (that does, incidentally, remind me of a stange wee bear). i'm glad that we found this one when we did. when i held her up to the sunlight, i noticed just how ephemeral these creatures are.

today, as i post this, i am acutely aware of the restorative power that occurs when finding beauty in unlikely places.

oh, just in case you are curious...the male's antannae are much, much bushier and its coloration much brighter. one more bit of information...she really is *that* large, almost a full 6 inches from wingtip to wingtip.