Butterflies, by Kevin

Butterflies are ace. Some people think that they are not ace, but they are wrong. Famous people who have collected butterflies as a hobby include Robert Mackenzie, the Canadian man who operated the Swingometer on election nights on the television, but he is dead now; Vladimir Nabokov, the Russian-born novelist who courted controversy with his publication of Lolita, about a grown man lusting after pre-pubescent girls, and who is also dead; and Julius Caesar, a Roman. Non-famous people who have collected butterflies include Xavier McWhirter, Hilary Collins, and Harry “Mad Dogg” Dog. I mention Hilary Collins for a reason. The reason is that she is a lady. The reason why her ladyness is important is that collecting butterflies is usually regarded as a hobby that only men do. It is not. It is a hobby that predominantly men do, but some special ladies can do it too. The reasons why it is a predominantly male hobby are that 1) men are better at collecting things and 2) men are better at killing things. These factors are both important in the collecting of butterflies because 1) collecting butterflies involves collecting and 2) killing them is the best bit. The reason why men are better at these aspects of collecting butterflies is that men are far more likely than women to be autistic. It is scientifically proven. In the past, this has meant a restriction in popularity for the hobby, but with so many more diagnoses of autism amongst children these days, there is great optimism among the butterfly collecting fraternity that the hobby will increase in popularity. We have the MMR vaccine to thank for that. Except that this is unsubstantiated pseudoscientific hogwash.


WHAT YOU NEED

In order to collect butterflies you need a net on a stick, a cultivated field not too far from your home, a mounting tray, a killing jar, some fixative, some preservative, and some pins. The best pins are flat-headed ones because those are the least visible when you push them through the butterfly’s body. You can also use pins with a black head, since blackness also has reduced visibility and does not attract attention. It is possible to buy pins with different coloured heads, such as red, blue, green, purple, orange, mauve, yellow, violet, brown, taupe, puce, russet, indigo, cerulean, azure, caramel, purple again, grey, pink, montenegro, scarlet, cream, and cerise, but none of them are any good for butterfly collecting. You cannot get pins with lemon heads because lemon is not a colour. It is a flavour. The reason why you cannot get pins with lemon-flavoured heads is that the manufacturers of pins do not want people to eat them. That is why they deliberately make all pins metal flavoured. It is also why they make one end of the pin particularly sharp. So that, if you swallow a pin as an experiment, you won’t do it again.


SOME CLARIFICATION

Collecting Butterflies has nothing to do with the BBC television comedy series called Butterflies and written by Carla Lane and featuring Geoffrey Palmer, Wendy Craig, Rodney and the other one. This statement is not entirely true, however: There is a vague connection, because Geoffrey Palmer’s character collected butterflies in the series. Sadly, however, the programme hardly ever focused on his hobby and instead spent most of the time following Wendy Craig around while she fretted about cheating on her husband. Butterflies have very little to do with adultery. This series was a solid gold opportunity to introduce butterfly collecting to the nation at large, but because Carla Lane is a lady, she failed to see the significance of the chance she had been given.


ANOTHER TRAVESTY

The lyrics to the theme tune of the programme Butterflies went as follows:

Love is like a butterfly
As soft and gentle as a sigh
The multicoloured moods of love
Are like its satin wings

Love makes your heart feel strange inside
It flutters like soft wings in flight
Love is like a butterfly
A rare and gentle thing.

There are a number of problems with these lyrics. The most obvious one is that they were written by Dolly Parton, another lady, and one who does not collect butterflies. It is clear that she has no idea what butterflies are like. One thing is for certain, and that is that they are nothing like love. And I speak as someone who doesn't even know what love is!


WHAT YOU DO

You catch the butterflies in your net, study them to see if they are ones that you have collected before or if they are different, kill them if they are new ones, take them home, then mount them in your display tray and put them in the attic.

There. I hope that you will take up butterfly collecting now that I have shown you how good it is.

And that is the end.




(Kevin Macpherson is Archangel Lepidopterist at the Royal Society for Killing Things, Walthamstow. Hilary Collins is a man.)