Time to make a completely generalized statement about all of humanity.

Okay, here goes.  People LOVE butterflies.  Not so much moths, or other bugs that fly around, but butterflies?  Fuck yeah to butterflies!  Those gossamer wings, those cute antennae, the delightful patterns of color that shine in the sun as they silently float about.  I’m not saying that butterflies make folks hard, but it’s almost to that point.  And if you just happened to get hard over it, just admit that you’d probably try to get the precious little thing to land on your dick.  Because what’s better than a winged, beauteous entity alighting on your finger?  A butterfly on your dick.  That’s what’s better.

So, I’m effectively here to bust humanity’s collective boner for butterflies with a sharp thwap.  Here it is, butterfly lovers…

I was in the mountains of Idaho recently (not every mountain in Idaho.  That’s ludicrous since there are at least fifty of them and I can’t bi-locate or even fifty-locate) and the day was hot and there was a fire nearby and really, I don’t want to paint you a fucking picture of the day or why I was up there or use imagery of any kind because frankly it’s completely irrelevant to my story and you should stop being so ass-lazy and just make something up that suits you.  Really.  Do it.  Pretend I was up there tracking Sasquatch or panning gold or finding unripe huckleberries and picking them JUST SO NO ONE CAN PICK THEM WHEN THEY ARE RIPE AND READY TO EAT.*

*Note: One of these things I’ve asked you to envision me doing is really what I was doing.**

**Double note: I didn’t want to put the footnote at the bottom of the page because that would take time for me to figure out so you get it here, bitch.  And you like it.  And I know it.

Back to my story, then.  I was passengering along (because I wasn’t driving.  So passengering is now a verb.  Coined!) and my friend JMad slowed down his truck after we’d been driving on a dirt road for one million miles and said to me, “there are so many butterflies I don’t want to hit them with my truck.”  And at the exact same time I had these two thoughts: “Oh no!  Let’s not hurt the butterflies” AND “JMad, you are a giant pussy.”  And I reconciled these varying thoughts by melding them into one thought which happened to be, “JMad intentionally hurts butterflies and is a fucking horrible human being.”

Then he asked me if I wanted to get out and take pictures of the butterflies and I thought, “Why?  So I can provide crime scene photos to the sheriff of the massacre your Dodge Ram’s grill leaves in its wake?”  But instead I said, “Yes, I like butterflies.”  Because who the hell doesn’t like butterflies?? Right?  Remember the boner?  Huh, huh? AND I didn’t want him to know I was documenting his genocidal tendencies (oh, I like that.  I think that takes the tres leche cake over homicidal tendencies.  So-and-so seems like they want to kill someone?  Is that all?  Yawn.  Let me know when they’re gunning for an entire species.  Then I’ll perk up.).

I slid out of the truck and pulled out my iPhone and I tried to creep up on the butterflies and they all flitted away cute-like when they saw my shadow so I angled myself right and came at them like I was all business and they were MY business.  I bet I saw ten different types of butterflies.  Miniscule ones that had heather-gray wings until they opened them wide to revel a shock of periwinkle.  Some had wings laced in black with dabs of orange and red in the webbing.  Then there were the swallowtails and monarchs and even the dull white ones (they’re the last ones to get invited to land on the boner). It was fucking magical.  I felt like I’d stepped into Butterfly Kingdom with them gliding around my ears and over my cheekbones and offering me yarrow tea out of indescribably tiny porcelain cups.

Here, look, it’s one of the landed gentry (holy shit that’s funny.  Get it?  Because they’re like, in a kingdom, so they’re all noble, but instead of owning land they just LAND from flying…and now I know I’m a genius)!

Ah, a flutterby on something hard.

At this point I’d turned into the same butterfly junkie anyone would have turned into.  So pretty!  So delicate!  So pure and gentle and innocent and untainted by Meth or premarital sex or scrotum acne!

Eventually I got back in the truck and resumed passengering, until a little ways up the road.  There, on a glistening piece of white granite, was a veritable butterfly-moot of black and white-winged lovelies.  JMad asked again if I’d like to take a picture and I was like, “If I don’t get a picture of this I will slash your tires and run off into the woods with my shoes on my hands.”

I’d gone butterfly nuts.

I got out, crept up on those heavenly creatures, all the while wondering what they were clustered around.  Was it a crevice of dew on the rock, left untouched and unsullied by giardia?  Was it a bit of stardust or the thumb-print of God?

I had a great picture lined up, all nice and close.  I got this one:

So very bad…

But then, they all fluttered away.  And I saw what they were standing on.

Shit.  They were standing around on shit.

Now, I know that butterflies absorb moisture through their feet, so maybe they were just looking for moisture?  There was a stream not ten feet from them, but hey, fecal water…because the shit was fresh all right.  Some animal had placed a nice swirly of brown on the middle of that rock and fucked off.  Even if it’d been Bambi, a cute little speckled fawn, the shit of the innocent being eaten by the innocent butterflies of Butterfly Kingdom just makes it epically coprophagous and hurts my tenders.

And thus concludes my cautionary tale.  Butterflies are dirty, dirty little insects that are drawn to shit just as flies are, except they’re more douchey than flies because they come off as pretty and delicate and pure, luring you into wishing they would land on your fingers (or better yet, your boner) so that you can feel special and blessed and maybe even whisper into their antennae,”God really does love me most, doesn’t he?”  Well, keep in mind, now and forever, that those feetsies are covered with feces.  They have feces feetsies.  Say it out loud.  FECES FEETSIES.  Now look at the picture of the scat-eating butter-traitors and say it over and over until you NEVER TOUCH ONE AGAIN!

And that’s how I’ve saved you all from getting dysentery and dying.