What the Butterfly Saw

Malcolm Gladwell has a fairly new book out called What the Dog Saw. It is a collection of stories that he has written for The New Yorker magazine. I thoroughly enjoy Gladwell’s work and have read The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, and most recently What the Dog Saw. The title of What the Dog Saw is based on the story Gladwell wrote about Cesar Milan. Now you may wonder why I got into all of this “what the butterfly saw” business. Let me explain.....
It was a little cooler and a bit cloudy this morning. I haven’t been outside any more than absolutely necessary the past few days because of the miserable heat, so I took the opportunity to get outside this morning and enjoy the pleasant change in the weather. Well, I guess you’ve figured out by now that if I go, the camera goes, as does Squirt.
Soon after we went outside I saw another butterfly flitting from bloom to bloom so I set my camera’s shutter speed on 1/4000 and “gave it a shot”. I’ve not a clue what kind of butterfly this is and I’ve spent far too much time on the internet trying to figure it out. It doesn’t look exactly like any of the orange butterflies I see on the net. If anyone knows, I’d love to hear.

And I guess I still haven’t explained why I titled the blog “What the Butterfly Saw”? These purple flowers are what the butterfly saw. Since my thumb is anything but green, I let my lifelong friend, Harolyn, choose what is planted in the pots every year, and I must add that I beg her to find someone to do the planting since I hate to get my hands dirty. Harolyn is the town landscaping expert and I give her free reign with “everything outdoors” here. I only know the difference between the more ordinary flowers like petunias, geraniums, etc. so I don’t even know what this plant is; but I love the way it grows and drapes. I’m not usually a big fan of purple, but I think this is one of the most beautiful plants I’ve ever had on my patio. I guess this butterfly liked the looks of it, too. I took a variety of shots of this plant, some of which were actually better compositions, but I decided on these views because I think either of these might have been the way the butterfly was looking at it.

















While I was busy trying to get some good shots of the butterfly, there was another story going on. It should be titled “What the Dog Smelled”. My guess is that there is a desperate frog under the hose reel. Even though I was confident it could only be a pitiful frog, I wouldn’t move the reel for fear of an imminent illness or death. If it were, indeed, a frog as I suspected, Squirt would have quickly captured it and the final result of that would have been a sickly Squirt. The lesser of the possibilities was that there was a snake under there. Had that been the case, Mimi Pearl would have had a heart attack. So I let it be. Squirt tried every contortion to get at whatever was hiding under the hose reel.




I guess he decided that since all else had failed, he might be able to chew the hose reel up enough to get to whatever was under there.





Squirt finally exhausted himself and came inside. I always tell him to let me see his feet so I can wipe off any dirt or mud before he can track it all around, and on command he rolls over and holds his feet up for me to clean them off. He may be a spoiled rotten dog, but he is a smart one.