I have loved butterflies my whole life. As my family could tell you, if you left me in a butterfly house and came back hours later, I'd still be there, patiently waiting for one to land on me. In fact, this happened once when I was about your age, which is a friendly reminder to always stay with your field trip group, folks! Now, 15 years later, I am turning 24, and I still hadn't had a lot of experience with these beautiful creatures. But I'd heard of a butterfly sanctuary in Mindo (called a mariposario) where it was common for butterflies to actually land on visitors! For my birthday, I booked a trip there.
Butterflies come in all shapes and sizes, and they look different at different stages in their lives. As eggs, they're about the size of the little colored ball on a sewing pin. As caterpillars, they start out at a couple of millimeters and can grow to a couple of inches long. They form a chrysalis, where they spend weeks or months transforming. When they are ready, they emerge wet and crumpled, and with time and sunlight the wings unfurl. The wings are covered in hundreds of thousands of tiny scales that make up a butterfly's patterns. My favorite species at the mariposario were the cloudless sulphur (a completely yellow butterfly), the blue morpho (a striking, sapphire-colored specimen) and the glasswing.
