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Building a butterfly fascination
© St. Petersburg Times, BROOKSVILLE -- Though it requires no sleight of hand, Sue Atkins' release of a giant swallowtail butterfly has the look of a magic trick. She unfolds a triangle of cardboard to reveal a live butterfly that, at first, lies so still it could be mistaken for the picture printed on the envelope. Then it suddenly comes to life, fluttering back and forth for a few seconds before finding nectar-producing flowers in the greenhouse in Atkins' back yard. Atkins, the technology coordinator at Spring Hill Elementary School, and Linda Vagts, office supervisor and wildlife habitat coordinator at Florida Rock Industries, are the founders of Flutter, Fly Away Farm. They are in the business of selling butterflies and, indirectly, what people feel when they see them turned loose. "They can be very symbolic, depending on the words spoken and the circumstances," Atkins said. "Their release is just a point of time when people think about the whole cycle of life." Whether it is because of their vivid colors or their near weightlessness or the dramatically different stages they go through -- egg, caterpillar, chrysalis and mature adult -- butterflies can represent almost any important passage in the lives of people. Atkins suggests that one butterfly can serve as a metaphor for the spirit of a loved one at a funeral. A pair, turned loose at a wedding, can illustrate the married couple setting out together. There are some less poetic possibilities as well, according to the farm's literature, such as "a faculty meeting, a workshop on the school improvement plan, or the kick-off to a new program that you hope will impact the lives of many." In starting the farm in May, they joined a tiny but growing segment of the economy. There are now about 10 dealers in Florida registered with the International Butterfly Breeders Association, Vagts said. One of the first was Greathouse Butterfly Farm near Gainesville, which began doing business in 1995 and is now the largest in the country. "When we grow up, we want to be just like them," Atkins said. Recently, the Greathouse farm filled its 800th order of the year, most of which were for several dozen insects, Kay Greathouse said. That is more orders than it shipped out all of last year. "It's definitely growing," Greathouse said. But people who are tempted by the expanding market should beware, she said. "Lots of people think it's very easy, and they start doing it and find out it's very hard," she said. Vagts and Atkins have already discovered that. They originally decided to establish their stock by ordering eggs from a wholesale supplier and raise the caterpillars in laboratory dishes by feeding them waxy blocks of artificial food. "They all died," Atkins said. They have since changed their approach, nurturing butterflies they can find around their house on Grove Road, north of State Road 50. They capture butterflies with nets or pick up eggs. They nurture them as caterpillars on the trees Vagts and Atkins keep in a single-wide mobile home on their property. The adults are released into the butterfly equivalent of an aviary, a greenhouse with flowers -- including pentas and lantana -- that produce the nectar that most adult butterflies depend upon. Taped to the wall of the aviary are a few squares of paper towel soaked with Gatorade to supplement the nectar. Relying on local species not only lowers expenses, it will also guarantee that they raise only native species, which is one of the goals of the business. In fact, they intend to focus on raising three common local species -- the gulf fritillary, the giant swallowtail and the monarch. They have yet to sell their first butterfly and don't envision ever shipping out dozens at once, at least not in the near future. "To me that's just a waste of good butterflies," Atkins said. Instead, they hope to encourage smaller releases. "We would also like to stay local," partly so they can supervise the releases, Vagts said. Though butterflies can be shipped successfully in ice-cooled boxes, bad things sometimes happen once they arrive at their destinations. They will not fly away, for example, if they are released into cold air or rain, as sometimes happens, Vagts said: "We've heard so many horror stories." Their farm charges $8 for each butterfly packaged in an envelope for individual release, $80 per dozen for mass releases. Orders must be placed at least a month in advance by calling 796-5005. Money, of course, is one reason Vagts and Atkins decided to go into the butterfly business. They are also attracted by the qualities they expect will draw customers -- the beauty and delicacy of butterflies. "I've always been fascinated by butterflies," said Vagts, 52, who began observing them as a child in rural Pennsylvania and has continued to study them in her job at the mine. "To me, butterflies are just gorgeous," said Atkins, 52. "I love my dogs, but they just aren't butterflies." But these are not necessarily the most interesting things about butterflies, they say. There is, for example, the means by which these apparently defenseless creatures have managed to survive for millions of years. Monarchs are poisonous to predators because of the toxins they carry from the milkweed plants they eat as caterpillars. "After tasting a monarch, a predator might associate the bright warning colors of the adult or caterpillar with an unpleasant meal and avoid monarchs in the future," according to the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center's Web site. Viceroys have survived mostly by looking like monarchs, Atkins said. Giant swallowtails are one of the grandest native insect species, with black-and-yellow wings that sometimes have a span of more than 6 inches. They live to that point, though, by assuming less attractive forms. As caterpillars, they strongly resemble bird droppings. Their chrysalides often attach themselves to the trunk of a thorny native citrus bush called Hercules' club, where they are indistinguishable from the stub of a broken branch. Also fascinating, Vagts and Atkins say, is how the lives of butterflies are tied into the natural system. That explains why people are now willing to pay for butterflies they used to be able to see all around them. Gulf fritillaries, which have a similar coloration as Monarchs -- orange with black veins and white dots -- lay their eggs on passion vines. The caterpillars depend on the leaves for food after they hatch, and chrysalides hang from the underside of the leaves. When the path for the Suncoast Corridor was cut a few yards behind their home, large patches of the vine were destroyed and the population of gulf fritillaries noticeably declined. "That's the only plant the zebra long wings and the gulf fritillaries will use," Atkins said. "When those are gone, they have nowhere else to go."
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