Fit for far-flung fluttering

PETER BUFFA

Have you seen them yet?

I have.

It was awful.

They had big wings, bulging eyes, a long snout and really long,

spindly legs -- six of them. They were everywhere, I tell you,

everywhere!

Oh, calm down for God’s sake, they’re just butterflies.

As you have heard, and probably seen, the spring butterflies have

arrived, with a vengeance. The little beauties that blew into town

this week are called painted ladies, a name given to butterflies that

wear too much makeup. They look a lot like the Big Kahuna of

butterflies, the monarch, but smaller.

There are butterflies almost everywhere, and they reemerge every

spring. But this sort of mass migration, with millions and millions

of the little guys in transit at the same time only happens when the

conditions are just right. And in this case, “right” means lots and

lots of the wet stuff during the winter. Does that ring a bell?

Given the rains we’ve had, it’s all butterflies all the time.

“In a rainy year like this one, there’s a huge production and more

growth of their food plant,” said UC Irvine biology professor Peter

Bryant.

Butterfly deep-thinkers say that we haven’t seen anything this big

since the 1970s.

And talk about good timing. The butterflies showed up just in time

for the April 17 opening of the new butterfly house at the

Environmental Nature Center in Newport Beach. By the way, have you

been there yet? Very cool place, especially for small people -- 16th

Street, just past the football field at Newport Harbor High School,

open Monday through Saturday, everything you’ve always wanted to know

about the environment, nature and centers. So go.

In view of the butterfly bonanza, I wanted to give you some facts,

statistics and otherwise useless information about the little

pretties, since I am highly trained in entomology, which is the study

of low-fat baked goods.

Why are they called butterflies? I have no idea.

One story is that the original name was flutterbys but eventually

became butterflies, which is much easier on the tongue.

Cute story, but it’s an old wives’ tale. Why is it always a tale

told by “old wives” if I may ask? Why do old husbands never have

anything to say about this stuff? I don’t get it.

The Old English version of butterfly is buttorfleoge, which is

very close to the Dutch word for butterfly, both of which imply

stealing butter -- a common belief back in the way back when.

In fact, there is an English legend that witches turn themselves

into butterflies to steal butter. Seems like a lot of trouble to

score a little butter since witches can steal whatever they want and

turn you into a toad if you look at them cross-eyed, but I guess you

had to be there. It is interesting how much butterfly imagery worked

its way into the language, though. You get butterflies in your

stomach; there are butterfly nuts; swimmers do the butterfly;

butchers butterfly meat, and a butterfly needle is that thing at the

end of an IV tube, to name just a few.

If biology is your thing, butterflies belong to the order

lepidoptera, which means “leopard who wears glasses,” and to one of

two families: hesperioidea -- which means “flying insects from

Hesperia,” or papilionoidea, Latin for “fear of old Dustin Hoffman

and Steve McQueen movies.”

There are about 28,000 species of butterflies around the world,

and the oldest butterfly fossils date from the Cretaceous Period,

about 130 million years ago. There are four distinct stages in the

life of a butterfly. It starts out as an egg, usually laid on a leaf,

then hatches into a larva, or to you laymen, a caterpillar. Then

comes the pupa stage, which is when they go to Hawaii for two weeks,

and finally, it emerges as a gorgeous, adult butterfly.

If you think you like warm weather, try being a butterfly.

Butterflies are incredible fliers -- some of them can crank it up to

over 30 mph -- but they are not cleared for takeoff until their body

temperature reaches 86 degrees. That’s one reason you see butterflies

just “lounging” on a leaf or the back of a patio chair. They’re not

on a break. They’re actually soaking up as much sunlight as they can

before they take off on their next hop.

And migrate? I’ll give you migrate. When the cold weather sets in,

butterflies from all over the country head for warm, cozy breeding

grounds in the Southwest and Mexico, traveling 2,500 miles or more on

those incredible little wings. When spring rolls around, it’s time to

head north, and this year, we just happen to be a wide spot in the

road. Some of the butterflies you see outside your window right now

will make it to the Bay Area, but a few long-haulers will make it all

the way to Oregon and Washington.

There’s one last thing you absolutely, positively, have to know,

and that’s the difference between butterflies and moths. It makes

butterflies nuts when people confuse them with moths.

Here are two tips, although neither one is foolproof. The first is

that most moths are nocturnal. If it’s flitting around in the light

of day, it’s probably a butterfly. The second is that when a moth is

at rest it usually drops its wings to a horizontal position, but a

butterfly usually raises its wings to a vertical position.

So that’s the whole deal -- painted ladies, nearsighted leopards

and butterfly nuts.

And please, try to remember about the moths. There’s nothing worse

than a pouty butterfly.

I gotta go.