9/15/08

There are many non-for-profit or community friendly restaurants in and around Siem Reap that donate profits to build school, provide wells for villages and the like. One such place, The Butterfly Garden restaurant, is located near my hotel and has thousands of butterflies buzzing around while you eat. The problem: they seem to be constantly dying. The second time I went to this place was a massacre, with wing damaged butterflies twitching in corners, huge yellow and red butterflies slowly expiring, surprisingly loudly, on the garden tiles. I know that they don't live long, but it seemed like something was particularly wrong. Mass butterfly deaths are rather disturbing.

-/^*^\-


carnage.

I pressed one in my book.

2 comments:

Silvia Elena said...

The one you pressed is so pretty. Buut I was watching Microcosmos the other day and saw how ugly butterflies can be up close. Scary alien things.

Anonymous said...

Butterflies are very sensitive to chemicals- someone may have unintentionaly poisoned them.

Butterfly Attractions tend to replenish the insects regularly- it could also be that the cafe got a lot of butterflys at the same time, and you visited at the end of that groups life cycle.

I know what you mean about surpisingly noisy butterflies-

I once found a large cocoon in a pile of leaves- I took a it into my Apt. and put it on a shelf. A couple of nights later my roomates dog started barking like crazy- the coccoon was opening and making LOUD cracking noises- a lot of gooey liquid spurted out too-
It was very "Alien".
The creature that emerged was a HUGE moth- quite lovely. It took a few hours for its wings to expand and fully open. I let it fly away into the night.

Love, Dad