The Black Swallowtail and Me

Yesterday I had an amazing experience with a butterfly in my garden.  Princess of the Universe had a friend coming over to play, so I walked outside to greet the little girl’s mom when they pulled into the yard.

I looked down at my rue to see an awful sight.  A very large wasp (a paper wasp maybe) had a beautiful, large black swallowtail by the tip of its wing, pulling and dragging it down the rue stem.  Down they went, the butterfly struggling to get free.  I was not sure what to do, as I try not to interfere with nature and all her life cycles.  I have certainly seen hornworms with braconid wasp eggs on them before, but I’ve never seen a large brown wasp attacking a full-grown butterfly.  Finally, I could take it no more.

I did not hurt the wasp, but simply put out my hand, touched the butterfly, and the butterfly jumped/half fell onto it as the wasp flew away. 

The butterfly seemed partially paralyzed and it practically fell from my hand, twirling to the ground when I tried to place it safely into a nearby cover of flowers and foliage.  Unable to do anything else, I left the butterfly in the deep foliage it was in and went inside to work. 

Later I went back out to see if I could find the butterfly and to see how it was doing.  In fact, the picture above is from my trip back out — maybe an hour after I had removed the butterfly from the wasp.

I put my hand out and the butterfly immediately crawled onto it. 

It was like it knew me.  It kept putting its front legs out like it was scratching and feeling my arm.  It seemed okay, so I tried to put it gently onto a shrub nearby.  It flew onto a branch!  That made me so happy.  I had been wondering if it could even fly at this point, especially since the wasp had a little piece of wing in its mouth when it flew away.

BUT the butterfly would not stay on the shrub.  If flew back down to my arm and started scratching at my arm again.

It walked up, up my arm.

Up my shirt.  So I gently lifted it onto my finger.  It flew onto my skirt.

It began crawling up again – up my chest, towards my face, like it was saying goodbye. 

I put my hand in its way once again and it crawled onto it.  I stood up and the butterfly flew away!  I watched it go across the yard and up into a butterfly bush. 

Wasp, whatever you were doing, so sorry to interfere, but I was happy to see the butterfly get away.

Lynn