The Collector

(entry for 10/16/24)

I had turned ten in March and that summer I went to Junior Camp for the first time, at a place called Glacier View, though the only glacier within view, then or now, was a tiny one far to the west. (It was in Eastern Colorado, near Boulder, and while it still belongs to the SDA church, it is no longer a youth camp, and the dormitories are long gone.) Having attended there for three years in a row, I have many fond memories of the place, especially the enormous campfires every night, but that first summer is still the strongest in my memory banks. I was in the first bunk, just inside the front door, on a bunk that was open to the ceiling though it was not a ‘top bunk.’ While most bunks in the dorm were double-decker, mine was not. Mine was one of only two single-deck beds in the entire place, which was huge. How I lucked out and got one by myself, I have no idea, but I know I enjoyed it. (Both of the next two years I was on the bottom bunk of a double-decker.)

Another thing I enjoyed that first summer was the variety of craft classes that one cold take. I made lanyards out of plastic lacing. I learned leathercraft, using real leather, of which I loved the smell, though I didn’t like to think about where the materials had come from. I learned to etch aluminum platters and plates, using frightening acids and strange waxes.

But that first year the thing I liked the most wasn’t exactly a craft, though it was taught as one: butterfly collecting and mounting. Every weekday morning, those of us in the class would go out with nets on long poles and catch butterflies for half an hour. Then for the second half of the hour, we would come back in, chloroform the little beasties, and mount them.

There was a huge variety. Monarchs, Cloudless and Clouded Sulfurs, Skippers, Mourning Cloaks, Blues and Coppers, and Tiger Swallowtails. Mostly, though, there were so-called ‘Cabbages.’ The tiny green caterpillars ate far more than just wild cabbage, but somehow they had been named for that plant. They were a very plain white, with faint dark gray markings, and we all got tired of them very quickly. They were probably the least attractive of all the varieties we found.

When camp was over and I went back home to Montrose, I decided to take up collecting in earnest. I bought the materials for, and made, my own collecting net. (The handle was from an old broom.) I begged a large wide-mouth jar with a screw lid from my mom. I went to the drugstore and bought a bottle of chloroform. (That’s right, a ten year old kid could in those days still buy dangerous chemicals without question or explanation.) From the same pharmacy I bought a box of cotton swabs to soak with the chloroform, and I was ready.

About ten blocks from our house on South Second Avenue (the Brosch house mentioned in a previous post) there was a huge open and untilled field, covered with weeds, though I didn’t think of them as weeds. I thought of them as butterfly food, which indeed they were. There was milkweed to attract the Monarchs; honeysuckle and other deep-throated flowers for the Sulphurs, which have abnormally long ‘tongues’; dandelion, phlox, and bee-balm for the Swallowtails; and, of course, wild cabbage for the ‘Cabbages.’ There were a lot of Cabbages, both the plants and the insects. There were probably ten Cabbage butterflies for every one of any other species.

The problem with collecting butterflies in a huge vacant lot is damage. The potential specimens are so buffeted by wind, so battered by running into tall plants and each other, and so bleached by hot sunlight, that finding a pristine butterfly to capture, kill, and mount is a rare and exciting event. (Not to mention, the collecting process itself does more damage than any other factor.) 

I went out almost every day, in the morning when they were most active, to see what I could find. (Always taking the jar with at least one deadly swab in it.) What I found were a lot of battered Cabbages and not much else! (Thinking back, I’m rather amazed that I was allowed at ten years of age to go that far from our house and spend literally hours by myself. But my mom didn’t seem to mind. And no one else even knew!)

What I wanted most was not a gorgeous Monarch or Tiger, or even a velvety Mourning Cloak. What I really wanted was a Cloudless Sulfur, which of course was the hardest of all to find, especially in good condition. (See photo at the top of this post.) Their average life-span is one week, and by the end of that week, they are in pretty bad shape, so you pretty much have to find them within the first several hours after they ‘hatch’ from their pupae. And that’s really hard to do, though it was my constant goal. The pupae are hard to see, and even harder to find, as they tend to be quite hidden. But I did try, all summer long.

What I finally realized was that the easiest way to collect good specimens was to gather the caterpillars, feed them while they grew, wait for them to form their pupae, and then watch like a hawk for the several days it took the pupae to ‘hatch,’ and then put the poor little thing into the chloroform jar and kill it before it had a chance to do any damage to itself! This was easy with Cabbages. It was easy to find the pupae. It was even easier to find the caterpillars, which seemed to be everywhere.

Here are some Cabbage caterpillars:

And here’s one’s pupa:

In retrospect, this seems like an extremely cynical and perhaps even obnoxious activity, but at the time it didn’t bother me at all. What did bother me was the need to stretch the adults into unnatural shapes to meet mounting standards.

Here’s what a naturally-shaped Cabbage looks like:

Here’s what it looks like when ‘properly’ mounted:

No real butterfly in the real world ever remotely resembled the shape that is considered de rigueur for a collection. Why this is I don’t really know, though I’ve heard it explained as the desire to show the whole of all four wings, which normally overlap by more than 50%. (In a cabbage it’s more like 70%.)

So I found lots of Cabbage caterpillars, waited for the right moment, and mounted pristine specimens galore. What I didn’t find were any Sulphurs, either Clouded or Cloudless. I knew there had to be caterpillars, or there wouldn’t have been any butterflies. But could I find them? No. 

I did eventually find one Clouded Sulphur caterpillar, but it died on me before reaching the pupa stage. I never did find even one Cloudless caterpillar or pupa. (Though I did manage to catch two adults in fairly decent condition.)

By the next summer I had moved on to other hobbies. My existing collection (about 90% Cabbages) sat untouched in a corner of the garage until it finally disappeared. I never found out what my mother did with it. Probably put it in the trash.

I’ll admit though, that on the rare occasions when I see a Cloudless, my first instinct is to try to catch it! (Lacking either net or chloroform, though, there’s not much point.)

Besides, I like them better alive.

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