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A life cycle flutters by

Story by Roseanne Monti, Public Relations. Photos by Monti, Penelope Chase.
Raising caterpillars into butterflies and releasing them back to nature reminds Penelope Chase of the many cycles of life.

Chase points to the plant that started it all.

A psychiatric consultation nurse, one of Chase's services is providing counseling at MUSC. She sometimes works with patients and families whose loved ones are near death. She likes to use butterflies as a metaphor for hope.

“You know the sun rises and sets and that is a predictable cycle,” she remarks, “and when you see a butterfly egg, that is the beginning of a cycle too. Being raised on a farm I have always been interested in how such things work,” Chase said.

“Four years ago, I was sitting on my front porch and saw the shadow of a butterfly stream by,” Chase remarked. She followed it to a nearby window box where it was laying eggs on a parsley plant. “At that time the eggs looked like mini tapioca. But they are easy to find if you know what you're looking for,” she said.

Two of Chases' butterflies pull nectar from flowers on her back porch. Part of the enjoyment involved in raising butterflies stems from the beauty that they bring out in the environment around them.

What she saw amazed her from that day on. Chase made a hobby of capturing caterpillars and providing them with parsley plants to feed on, hoping that they will go through the complex processes of becoming butterflies before her own eyes.

“The butterflies give me a chance to think about what happens in the cycle of life,” Chase said, “That is sometimes a hard concept to grasp. Butterflies help me in life and in my work,” Chase said, “especially if I have a patient who is very sick.”

Chase uses the symbolism of butterflies when helping her patients deal with death to put things in perspective for them. For Chase, “Death is just another doorway.  It's not necessarily a bad thing,” and she tries to relay this message that there are good things after death.

Chase uses a card to gauge the new hatchling's size. This butterfly just emerged from the jar in which it lay nestled in it's cocoon until it's time of “rebirth.”

Anyone can read about the cycle of butterflies, but observing the process is worth more than words can describe, Chase said, so she tries to capture the exact moment of the butterfly emerging, in two-gallon glass jars.

“I can see exactly what's happening. That fascinates me,” Chase said. “Observation comes first for me, but patience and knowledge are also a major part of the enjoyment.”

In an apparent feeding frenzy, Chase's caterpillars dine on parsley in order to gain the necessary nutrients for the forthcoming transformation.

Chase said she is ecologically conscious while raising butterflies. She suspects that urban development and pesticide spraying may be affecting their population.

“I like to help them regenerate because they are getting scarce. I may be adding to the butterfly population. That is a nice contribution,” she said.

In Chase's work she tries to pass on words of hope and encouragement to her patients. Looking back, one of her teacher's gave her meaningful words of advice that parallel her thoughts on butterflies. 

“My teacher once told me to be light in my thoughts,” Chase reflects, “and to me butterflies are light and not too solemn, and that helps me in my work.”

As far as any future goals for Chase's hobby she just wants to
continue to find a definite and safe means of propagating caterpillars to add to the butterfly population.

“The beauty and lightness of butterflies are a nonintellectual part of them,’ Chase proclaims, “The whole process from a tiny egg to delicate multicolored wings just fascinate me.”
 
 

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