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Screensize: 640 x 480 800 x 600 1024 x 768 1280 x 1024 UserName: Password: Format Mode: Basic  Help  Prompt  Format: Font Andale Mono Arial Arial Black Book Antiqua Century Gothic Comic Sans MS Courier New Georgia Impact Lucida Console Script MT Bold Stencil Tahoma Times New Roman Trebuchet MS Verdana   Size 1 2 3 4 5 6   Color Black Red Yellow Pink Green Orange Purple Blue Beige Brown Teal Navy Maroon LimeGreen Message: * HTML is OFF * Forum Code is ON Smilies Paisley sky full of butterflies. Tens of millions thistle-thirsty. The Painted Ladies leave Mexico on their long journey north twice in a decade. They fly at eye level 15 to 20 miles an hour. Their short life span of six weeks. Three as a caterpillar and chrysalsis. Three as a butterfly. Delicately beautiful. With two inch wingspans. Coral and rose-pink with lacy black edges. Double rings on the forewings like bubbles, like Anniversary champagne. We were paddling about 100 feet out. Dozens of them around us. Brushing our arms and our cheeks. The wax on our boards smells sweet. They kept touching down stalled in ecstasy. They have tiny faces and they taste with their legs. Here for a couple of months. There's a Nature Center on the Santa Ana River where on Butterfly Day, May 7th, you can stand inside a sunlit tent full of just-released butterflies and feed them watermelon from your hands. I imagine this is a strange and wonderful experience. Like perfect water, or...Astral music.