A Butterfly in March

 A Butterfly in March

On Mosquito Hill hiking trails today, we saw a pair of deer, sandhill cranes, and a snake.

But the big surprise was a butterfly, and a most unusual one, a Mourning Cloak.

It appears so early as an adult, because it’s a butterfly that hibernates!

It finds a winter shelter in a narrow slit in a tree, sleeps through the frigid months

protected by the glycol in its system, and emerges ready to give life to another generation.

And it’s a beautiful butterfly to boot, wings a rusty brown with a border of yellow, dotted with blue.

To the one who named it Mourning Cloak, its colors conjured up a garment of mourning. 

To us it was different, a harbinger of a beautiful Wisconsin spring.