ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, May 24, 1996 TAG: 9605240070
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NORFOLK
SOURCE: Associated Press
THEY MAY BE FREE, but their good life doesn't last forever. The exhibit is temporary, too.
You're born. You eat. You grow up and eat some more. You mate and sustain the line. There is no work involved. Ever. Then you die.
Talk about the life.
Unfortunately this cycle, which describes the metamorphosis of eggs to butterflies, lasts just 40 days if you're a swallowtail. If you're a monarch, shave off eight days and hope for a maximum of 32 sunrises and sunsets.
Mere humans can witness the miraculous, mysterious and brief life of a butterfly at the Virginia Zoo where, through Monday, hundreds of live, free-flying butterflies do their things - eating, mating and flying about in a special exhibit called ``Dancing Butterflies.''
Bill Hill, a 47-year-old Naples, Fla. restaurateur-turned-butterfly farmer, brought the traveling butterfly aviary to Norfolk. ``They are eye candy, no question about it,'' he says of the stars of his 3,000-square-foot, plant-filled exhibit.
Beneath the screen-sided tent, butterflies flutter by and land on whatever they think might be food. That includes human visitors, and an unscientific survey showed a predilection for the bodies and limbs of wide-eyed children.
Butterflies land on plants and deposit the eggs from which, in a few days, caterpillar larvae will crawl into the world. In less than two weeks, the larvae will molt five times, then become pupae encased in cocoons. Within hours, the butterfly body begins forming inside the cocoon. After two weeks, the adult is fully developed and emerges, completing the metamorphosis and moving on to the business of eating and mating.
All of these phases can be viewed up close by human visitors. In fact, the curious can get nose-to-nose with a pupa.
``It tickled,'' said Ashley Mattera, 7, of Chesapeake as a monarch butterfly took off from her cupped hand in search of something, or someone, more palatable. ``I just thought that they would stay on the flowers.''
Ashley's mother said the exhibit was much more than she expected. The diaphanous-winged insects proved to be as impressive as a spectacular fireworks display, evoking a never-ending wave of ooohs and ahs.
Dancing Butterflies is the only mobile butterfly aviary around. Hill said he puts up the show as a fund-raiser for nonprofit organizations, which is what brought him and the butterflies to Norfolk.
He drove up in a truck with 1,000 plants he and his wife, Debi, cultivated without chemicals on their farm, and the tent. The butterflies flew in, with more than a little low-tech help.
Throughout the exhibit's run in Norfolk, Hill will inform his wife of the types of butterflies he needs. Debi Hill, still in Florida, will wait until the butterflies are sleeping, wings closed, then slip them into a glassine envelope and refrigerate them, which puts them into a state of dormancy.
With the miracle of next-day air delivery and compartmentalized Styrofoam containers, the butterflies wake up the next day in Norfolk, ready to eat and mate.
Nancy Huber, a member of the Virginia Zoological Society's Board of Directors, said the exhibit is a temporary taste of what a permanent butterfly house will bring to the zoo.
Huber said the zoo's initial phase of its $15 million master plan includes converting part of the nearly century-old Victorian conservatory into a permanent butterfly aviary.
Mark Schneider, president of the Butterfly Society of Virginia and a 17-year zoo employee who runs its horticultural services, favors a permanent butterfly house. Conceptual drawings of the transformation from conservatory to home for fancy-free flying insects are already done, Schneider said.
Creating a hospitable place for butterflies will cost a lot of money - Schneider couldn't say exactly how much - but it could also be a tourist draw. A butterfly house in Norfolk would be the first in any East Coast zoo, Schneider said.
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