Bridalflies

I can see the romcom now…

Felicity, a scatty dreamer,
Known as Flick, a rose-cheeked beamer,
At a wedding in Californ-aye-ay.
And after vows before the priest,
A thousand butterflies released
Bring gasps of awe, as the band strikes up with My Way.

Flick is spellbound, Flick is smitten –
She’s never seen the like in Britain –
How can she bring butterflies back home ?
And think – how much she loves attending
Summer weddings never ending,
Circling-round the brides as flit-wings roam…!

But a Google on her return flight
Soon puts her zigzag thinking right –
The monarchs and mormons and morphos are def’nit’ly out !
She has to stick to native species,
Has to find our cutest beasties –
The ones to make the congregation shout !

Brimstones ?  Yellow beauties – great !
But Flick will learn they hibernate,
And that is why they’re rarely captive-bred.
And swallowtails may look so regal,
But to capture them’s illegal –
No chance she can raise some in her shed…

And I can picture well the scene
Where Flick is sure she’s found her queen –
The gleaming, bridal-dancing cabbage white.
She doesn’t understand the panics
From the guests who grow organics –
How can such a small thing cause such fright ?

Or how about she comes to learn
Hey best bet for the least concern
Are admirals and peacocks – at a price.
Her flower garden trades it’s petals
Into beds of singing nettles
Just to raise the caterpillars nice.

And oh, what hijinks they’ll create
When Flick hears of a heavyweight
The elephant of hawkmoths – what a stag !
But noisy wings attract a buzz,
And hairy bodies ruffle fuzz,
And spiral mouthparts set some tongues a-wag.

But hey-ho, here’s the happy ending –
Emo goths with nuptials pending
Love these bugs with a heavy-metal twist !
And so she spends each wedding do
In vintage black all Summer through,
Until the credits roll – you get the gist…

Persuading the usually crepuscular elephant hawkmoths to fly during the daytime is not impossible, but after the initial burst into the air, they probably won’t flit around for many minutes before wanting to settle down.  If Flick is written as smart, she’ll have numerous pots of honeysuckle / jasmine / red valerian / fuchsia dotted about the guests, perhaps supplemented with sponges soaked in sugar-water, to draw the moths back down, and become an attraction in their own right.  She could even stray scented sugar-water onto the palms of guests for an even closer approach.

But if she wants a proper day-flying hawkmoth, she could consider the hummingbird variety – but it comes with its own headaches.  Natural England considers it a non-native, but frequent visitor and suspected resident.  So, she might fall afoul of Section 14 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act (1981) for the wilful release of a non-native species (or, more specifically, “not ordinarily resident in and not a regular visitor to Great Britain in a wild state”).  The trouble she will face is that the Act does not supply a designated list of native species and does not simply declared any species not listed as illegal…

And does the law consider a species that arrives every year, and increasingly so with climate change, to actually be non-native in the first place ?  If she made a point of collecting her breeding population from individuals in Britain herself, and then contacts Natural England for clarification, they might tell her that they don’t think she’ll need a special licence – but this isn’t the same as saying her action is definitely lawful when the law has never been tested in this specific grey area.  Good content for a romcom, but likely to be pricy if she ends up in Crown Court as a test case  Perhaps she should just stick to the elephants…

Meanwhile, whoever organised this wedding was deffo breaking the law…