Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America

by Jon Mooallem

Butterflies occupy a special place in our imaginative wildernesses, transcending their status as bugs. They don’t sting, bite, buzz in your ear, or scamper across your kitchen floor. If you woke up to find one had alighted on your nose, you’d lie perfectly still, puzzling out whatever beneficent message the cosmos must be communicating to you—whereas you wouldn’t do this if you woke up with a banana slug on your nose, or a cockroach. We see butterflies as delicate, uncorrupted—which is probably why we’re so keen to paint them on our daughters’ cheeks at birthday parties or stitch them in glittery thread on their pajamas. We had to invent unicorns and fairies to keep little girls company. But we let the butterflies in, too, just as nature made them.