A Phenomenon of Nature

Beginning a few weeks ago, and as it happens at about this time every year, Painted Lady butterflies have dispersed through Southern California and Arizona on their way to their favorite flowers throughout North America. Some years we see more butterflies than other years and the reason is that with more rain in the winter there is more vegetation for the caterpillars to eat and therfore more caterpillars survive to become butterflies. Well, we had a lot of rain this winter. Lakes that were almost dry are full again. Mudslides have been happening everywhere. And, we've had plants and flowers emerge this spring that I've never seen before. And lots of Painted Lady butterflies. At first we had thousands of them. Then millions (even though I am not truly able to count into the millions) of them were flying by every day. When I went to Las Vegas last week I drove a section of highway in which about a hundred miles were filled with butterflies everywhere. But, all of that was nothing. On Thursday, March 31 from dawn to dusk a megazillion Painted Ladies flew through Southern California! Every cubic yard from the ground up to about 50 feet had a butterfly in it. All were flying north at about 20 mph. It was just an unbelievable endless blizzard of butterflies. And this was happening for hunderds of miles in every direction. All day long. I doubt that I'll ever see anything like that again for the rest of my life. Simply amazing!