Swimming Butterflies

It’s been HOT here, as in 85 F today. We had sweaters and jeans on this morning on our way out the door to school and were stripping down to bathing suits to stew in the kiddie pool in the backyard by noon.

The girls decided to have a “beach party” in the back yard after lunch, so we filled the pool, opened the sandbox and set up the beach umbrellas and laid towels on the lawn. We invited our neighbors over to enjoy the fun.

At one point, Mouse came running to me yelling “Mom! I RESCUED a butterfly from the POOL!”. As soon as I saw her tightly closed, dripping fist, I knew it wasn’t so much a rescue as a recovery. She opened her fingers to show me a little gray moth, sopping wet and not moving. She tried to get it to fly away, but well, it wasn’t really going anywhere. She flicked her hand and kind of plopped on the deck. My neighbor and I watched it, wondering what to say. Mouse said “It’ll dry out and then be ok” and since we didn’t really want to get into a indepth “death” conversation over a moth in 85F weather, we agreed that that just *might* be a possibility, as she skipped back to the pool.

Baboo wandered over to hover over the moth for a while. She noted that it was not moving. My friend, trying to smooth things over said “Well, butterflies aren’t very good swimmers. They should probably stay out of the pool.”

Baboo stood up like she had the answer from the universe, put her hands on her little bathing suit clad hips and said “She just needs to get her BATHING suit on and THEN she’ll be able to swim. Silly butterfly trying to swim without a bathing suit on!” and then proceeded to show us how a butterfly would flap her wings and swim at the same time.

Feeling very proud of herself, she also skipped off to join the other girls at the pool.

My neighbor looked at me with wide eyes and asked if Baboo really said that and then proceeded to keel over laughing.