Autumn arrives, as . storms suddenly acquire names. Over there, Hurricanes Irma, Jose, Maria. Over here, Storms Aileen, Brian, Caroline: a queue of peculiarly civilian namings – a quiz team of meteorological terror – due before Christmas, the news says.
A drop in temperature, a greying of the light and a whine of wind through cracks sent me into the garden to dismantle the swaying paraphernalia of summer. As I reached the buffeting tent my children had been playing in, I saw a patch of colour in the grass.
Here was a red admiral butterfly, a big one. It was hunkering between grass blades, maintaining its equilibrium like a sloop in full sail horribly exposed on the ocean but holding its own. I crouched down and watched its fine legs compensating against the wind. Amid a gathering tempest, it looked oddly serene.
We worry about our own, of course. But what about other life in bad weather? Walking across rainy Lakeland trussed up in nylon it’s difficult not to look at blank-faced Herdwick sheep and wonder if they’re as uncomfortable as you are. Birds’ claws grip reflexively at rest; they can ride out storms in trees. But there are some species that particular weather persecutes. Frogs and heat. Herons and ice. Moles and floods. Butterflies and wind.
Butterflies seem so fragile. Raindrops like bullets can strike them from the air. Cold snaps can starve them of the warmth they need to limber up their flight muscles. Wind can force them to stay in their roosts, this one’s perhaps in my old shed or log pile. Should I move it, potentially into a place of predators, or leave it be? As I watch, its wings tension, then draw closed, a little ashy triangle in the grass. The storm blows on. The red admiral’s there all evening. Next morning, it is gone.
I felt for it. The autumn seems oddly determined; suddenly this butterfly, like everything else in my garden, seemed like a refugee from summer, caught short. Yet in appearance this sunshine creature looked like a harbinger of autumn – a single brilliant-coloured leaf of russet and brown, settling on the grass, then blown elsewhere.
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