Free The Butterfly Plague by Timothy Findley

leaf of a milkweed plant.
    This butterfly was a lonely traveler. It journeyed without companions. Others would follow after (some had gone before it) and perhaps it sensed this. Every night, having selected its sleeping place, it would spread its wings out wide as a signal that it was there. Clutching a leaf with sickle-shaped claws, it would wait in this display until darkness fell and the dropping temperature prompted it to fold its wings again. But it remained alone.
    From time to time the butterfly encountered cities and towers in its flight. Whenever this happened it rose to a great height above them, riding the gentle breezes and allowing itself to be taken by them on its way.
    On five occasions there was rain. Once there was thunder and lightning and the wind rose to such a great force that it seemed the butterfly would be torn apart. During the rain squalls it clambered far away from the piercing drops into crevices on the faces of rocks. But when this wind rose and the rain was driven from the sky like so many pellets of lead, and when there seemed to be darkness everywhere and the temperature dropped and it could barely move across the ground because of the cold, it seemed that the butterfly must perish.
    At last it found a leaf-thatched burrow at the foot of a giant fir tree and it waited. It became numb. Its muscles would not respond. But it could see, and it lay inertly watching a mouse, itself searching for a hiding place. The mouse approached, nosing its way nearer and nearer, creeping noisily through weeds and grass. The mouse’s eyes were very large and its whiskers were long.
    Perhaps the fact of the terrible rain saved the butterfly; the mouse seemed more concerned with shelter than with food. It rested only inches from the butterfly’s hiding place and apparently did not even catch its scent.
    There was rain all night, and by 4:00 a.m. the temperature had dropped to thirty-eight degrees Fahrenheit on the ground. The butterfly was immobilized. It lost awareness.
    At 5:35 a.m. there was light.
    At 6:00 the sun appeared. At 7:00 it broke through the trees and the air began to steam. By 8:00 it was warm. By 9:00, hot.
    The butterfly responded.
    It crept from its place beneath the leaves.
    The mouse was gone. But there were other enemies, equally dangerous. On the ground, unable to fly, the butterfly was totally defenseless against such creatures as common ants, ground beetles, moles, and shrews. It must find the sun. It must spread and dry its wings. Flight was imperative.
    At last it achieved a measure of safety on the static fronds of a fern. It lay there, groggy and hardly alive, until 11:30 a.m., when the sun struck straight down through the trees and found it.
    Testing its wings, the butterfly discovered by trial and error that the rain had done some damage: a few of its scales were missing; there was a shredded irregular serration at the outer rim of its left front wing. But it could fly.
    Now there were the mountains.
    The butterfly selected southward-leading valleys and surmounted in dazzling arcs of flight the lower and lesser peaks. It rose on September 9th to a height of eleven thousand two hundred and fifty-one feet.
    It encountered little of importance. A bird attacked it, but the bird was blind in one eye and soon gave up its attempts. (This occurred during flight.) One day, the monarch passed over such a highly populated area it found no food and midday on the 13th of September, having achieved a distance approximately one hundred and eighty-two miles north of the city of Los Angeles, it was blown out to sea.
    This proved, however, somewhat providential, for the butterfly discovered, low over the water, a sea-breeze of twenty miles per hour. Riding this with easy grace, it soon found itself over land again, at a point much farther south than would have been achieved on the previous course. It traveled farther that day than on any other.
    On the night of the 13th, somewhat exhausted by this