Authors: Jessica Speart
“Are they dead?” I asked, captivated by the rainbow assortment.
“Nah. I just gave them a tiny pinch on the thorax to stun them for now. That way they won’t squirm around and damage their wings. I’ll throw them in the fridge, and then the freezer, once I get home, to finish them off. Here’s another tip for you. That’s the best way to get perfect specimens.”
I gazed at the lineup. Some butterflies were reddish orange, while others appeared copper brown with a purple sheen. Then there were those that had diagonal bands of yellow and black on their wings. Only one small butterfly was iridescent blue and lavender in color. There was something mesmerizing about the bug, even though its wingspan was only about an inch. I wondered if this was possibly the Mission blue butterfly that Mark Davis had told me about. Then I realized what I found to be so bewitching.
The world was now at a crossroads where even a tiny winged creature such as this tottered on the brink of extinction. I’d heard of butterflies referred to as barometers for the health of the planet. If so, what did the future hold for us as human beings? That thought remained with me as Aikens closed the lid.
I
followed the Red Elf toward Daly City. Its dense cluster of houses tumbled down the hillsides as if floating on a river of lava. Aikens parked in the driveway of a ticky-tacky dwelling with pink plastic flamingos and a black jockey holding a lantern on its front lawn. I got out of my Explorer and brought up the rear, strolling along a gnome-lined walkway to the entrance.
Talk about your eclectic mix. A suit of armor stood in the hallway guarding an array of Danish, Gothic, and Spanish this-looks-like-it’s-been-through-a-bullfight furniture.
“Pretty cool, huh?” Aikens said, proudly showing it off. “Everything comes from storage units. I always keep the choice stuff for myself.”
His sense of design was certainly unique. I promptly named it “eau de mishmash.” The place definitely made me feel better about my own thrown-together digs.
It was then I caught sight of something moving toward us from out of the corner of my eye. Half tumbleweed/half sootball, the mobile mass of unkempt knots and fur never veered from its course. I’d have guessed it was Cousin It from
The Addams Family
, but for the fact that rather than two legs it had four.
Whatever it was sashayed up and rubbed against me.
How could a Brillo pad possibly move?
I wondered. Then the crit
ter raised its head and purred. Whadda ya know? It was a walking, talking hairball. I bent down to pet the cat and my fingers got stuck in its fur.
“Hey, Ma! I’m home! We’ve got company, so make sure you’re decent.”
Ma?
Aikens had to be joking. The man was far too old to be living with his mother. Besides, what sort of woman would put up with this mess?
I found out as Ma Aikens shuffled into view. Rail thin, the woman was an animated scarecrow dressed in jeans and a denim jacket, with a pair of terrycloth flip-flops on her feet. A cigarette, consisting mostly of ashes, dangled from her mouth. But it was her face that demanded my attention. This was why hairdressers, makeup artists, and plastic surgeons existed. Her kisser was puckered and lined from too much sun, smoke, and general unhappiness, while a lump of peroxided straw sat like a nest on top of her head.
“Do me a favor, kiddo,” she said by way of greeting. “Marry my son and get him the hell out of here already, will ya? It’s the only way I’ll ever get this place clean.”
Ma Aikens snickered at my startled expression.
“Tell you what. I’ll make you a cup of coffee first. How’s that sound? Come with me into the kitchen.”
I did so out of sheer curiosity. It was well worth the trip. All the appliances—none of which had seen the wet side of a sponge for nearly forty years—were original, dating back to the 1960s. The hairball followed along. Jumping up, it licked at scraps of hardened food so old they’d become a permanent part of the stovetop. A package of chopped meat, long defrosted, sat waiting to be opened on the counter. I wondered if it was for tonight’s dinner, considering that it was queasy gray in color.
Ma Aikens threw a teaspoon of freeze-dried coffee, half of which stuck to the spoon, into a stained cup. “It’ll just
take a few minutes for the water to boil. This stove doesn’t work as well as it used to.”
No problem there. I wasn’t in a rush, since the kettle was blanketed in a layer of cat hair.
Aikens stuck his head in the doorway. “Hey Sally, stop dawdling and come into my bedroom. I want to show you the setup.”
Ma Aikens flashed a gap-toothed grin. “That’s my boy. Mitch doesn’t waste a minute once he finds someone he wants.”
In that case, I was grateful not to be the object of his desire.
“Go ahead. I’ll bring your coffee in when it’s ready. And don’t worry. I promise to knock first,” she said with a wink.
Oy veh.
Who ever said there’s somebody for everyone? I was tempted to ask where Pa Aikens was, but was afraid she might actually produce him.
I tiptoed around an obstacle course of junk on the floor, while following Mitch down the hallway.
He opened a door and we entered what appeared to be the room of no return. Had I not known better, I’d have sworn a bomb had gone off in the place. Clothes were strewn across almost every square inch of space. I stepped over boxes containing old watch crystals that, I imagined, Mitch was trying to sell on eBay.
My nose twitched at the whiff of a strange odor. It wasn’t Lysol, food, or perspiration, but the stench of mildew tinged with cat urine. I traced the moldy scent to a decrepit computer chair, while the Brillo pad of a cat did his business in a this-has-never-been-emptied litter box. Had I really planned to work for Aikens, I’d have immediately upped my price.
“Don’t pay any attention to the mess. You’ll be working in an adjoining room.”
Aikens pretended to cut a path through the morass with a machete as we made our way across the floor.
“Stay the hell out of here, Snowball!” he yelled at the feline, who tried to slip into the next room with us.
The cat hissed as Aikens slammed the door in its face.
I was relieved to find myself standing in a space relatively clean in comparison to the rest of the house. Lights were mounted in a row on one wall. They shone down on dozens of different receptacles, among them Tupperware containers, ice-cream cartons, and disposable paint buckets. Each had a swathe of chiffon netting draped over the top, as if it were a blushing bride hiding beneath a wedding veil.
“Let me give you a quick blow-by-blow of what’s going on here,” Aikens suggested. “I stick all butterfly eggs in the fridge for about three months at a temperature below forty degrees. That gets them to hatch into tiny larvae the size of pinheads. After that, I put roughly eighty of ’em in a yogurt container, where they begin to feed. Once they start to grow, I divvy them up into groups of twenty each. The main thing to remember is not to overcrowd the larvae. Otherwise they’ll turn into nasty little cannibals. As for these overhead lights, they’re all on timers so you don’t have to worry about ’em. I’ve been doing this gig long enough to have gotten the process down to a science. The caterpillars do best with about sixteen hours of light and eight hours of darkness each day. I also maintain the room temperature and humidity to help them grow faster.”
Aikens wasn’t fooling around when it came to rearing butterflies. He had his own mini-factory for producing “hatch ’em, feed ’em and freeze ’em” winged specimens. I peeked into one of the paint buckets and found that a hole had been cut in its bottom to accommodate a large potted plant. The resident caterpillars were voraciously gnawing away at the leaves.
“Once the eggs hatch, you’ve gotta be with them on a regular basis for months at a time. They need constant attention,
care, and feeding to keep them from getting disease. That’ll also be part of your job,” Aikens added.
We moved on to a fourteen-by-ten-inch plastic container in which a group of mature larvae were hungrily munching away on a pile of clippings. A symphony of tiny jaws could be heard chomping up and down if I stopped and held my breath. The crunch of vegetation followed the beat, beat, beat of larvae masticating in syncopation.
Aikens noticed that I was listening and softly chuckled. “Amazing, isn’t it? Just wait until they all begin hatching and feeding. Sometimes I can actually hear them chewing up a storm as I walk into the house. I always thought it would make a great horror flick. Caterpillars growing into giant mutants that eat people, pickups, buildings. You know, everything in sight.”
He picked up a small paintbrush and walked over to an aquarium where a bunch of pudgy caterpillars squirmed around.
“You’re gonna have to do this too. So, watch closely, ’cause you don’t want to hurt the little fellas.”
Aikens meticulously cleaned inside the tank while carefully moving caterpillars out of the way. No wonder the guy needed help. This was a twenty-four-hour, around-the-clock job.
“Okay, now look at this,” he said, pointing to one of the larger occupants. “This caterpillar’s nearly ready to go into chrysalis. That’s kinda like hibernation, or a cocoon stage. You’ll see what I mean as we proceed with what I like to call my PBS nature tour.”
But rather than continue on, Mitch suddenly leaned forward.
“Whoa, hold the phone. What the…Aw shit, I don’t goddamn well believe this!” He spat and angrily stomped his feet.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, unable to spot anything wrong.
“It’s these damn parasitic wasps! Get a load of this, will ya?” Aikens instructed, jabbing a finger at the caterpillar.
Bending down, I placed my face close to the glass. I saw nothing unusual at first. Then my eyes opened wide in astonishment. A small wasp had somehow developed inside the caterpillar and was now gnawing its way out.
“How did that happen?” I asked, both repulsed and mesmerized by the sight.
“Outside, of course. Where else? I picked up this batch of larvae on San Bruno Mountain after they’d already hatched,” Aikens explained in disgust. “A lousy parasitic wasp must have landed on the back of this caterpillar and laid a bunch of eggs under its skin. The offspring have it made in the shade after that. They grow up eating their host from the inside out, kinda like noshing on a Hungry Man meal. Pretty gross, huh?”
I didn’t respond, but continued to watch as the insect ripped through the caterpillar’s skin and slowly emerged out the side of its body. However, that wasn’t the end. The already grotesque now took on even further nightmarish proportions. The wasp was closely followed by a band of its brothers, in the insect equivalent of the movie
Alien
. The stunned caterpillar gradually collapsed in a lifeless heap, having been turned into nothing more than a shell.
A rush of chills swept over me—and the debauchery still wasn’t done. Having eaten their host alive, the little murderers now turned and stared at me with large buggy eyes, as though I might very well be their next victim. I stood up and backed away in revulsion.
“Yeah, I hate when that happens too. Kinda makes you wonder about God’s sense of humor, doesn’t it?” Aikens asked and slammed his fist down hard on each wasp. “Die you miserable little bastards,” he intoned, grinding away un
til they were nothing but a smudge of dust. “I don’t like to kill any of God’s creatures, but nobody screws with my babies.”
Then he wiped his hands clean on his pants.
“All aboard for the next stop,” he said and motioned for me to follow.
We journeyed over to a large aquarium that held adult butterflies flaunting their wings in full glory.
“So, then you
do
keep some of them alive,” I murmured, feeling slightly relieved.
“Yeah, just a choice few—until they mate and lay their eggs. Then it’s off to the freezer with them. What the hell. They only live for a few weeks, anyway.”
I kept my tongue in check, knowing that Aikens’s head would soon enough be rolling.
“Here’s something you’ll find interesting. These in here are all males,” he pointed out.
“How can you tell the difference?”
“I was hoping you’d ask. It’s because females are wider on the bottom, of course.” Aikens guffawed and slapped his thigh. “Nah, I’m just joshing with you. The easiest way to tell is by color difference. Males are usually brighter. Has anyone ever told you how they actually mate?”
I shook my head.
“Well, males search for a female just emerging from chrysalis, so that she’s still limp. Her wings will be wet and are folded around her body. That’s when he grabs his opportunity and quickly moves in. He flutters his wings and blows pheromones her way, hoping to seduce the little beauty. Then he presses up against her, belly-to-belly. Now she’s his prey. A set of claspers pops out from his sides, which allows him to latch onto the female’s body and open her wide. Then he has his way.”
I found myself looking at male butterflies in a whole different light. “That sounds rather like date rape to me.”
“Exactly,” Aikens cheerfully agreed. “There’s none of this take-me-to-dinner-and-a-movie-first crap. They just cut to the chase, the way it should be.”
Aikens was turning out to be quite the charmer. No wonder the cheesy tattoo on his arm was his main gal pal.
“There’s just a few more things for you to see.”
He opened the door to a walk-in closet and turned on the light. Large cardboard boxes, all filled with transparent glassine envelopes, sat stacked on the floor. Each envelope contained its own perfectly preserved butterfly.
“I call this my stock room.” Aikens smirked.
There had to be well over a thousand flawless little cadavers, all with wings stretched wide, as though waiting to take flight. Some were as exquisitely fragile as captive rays of light, while others resembled gaudy silver spangles on a woman’s fancy gown. Then there were those black as night but for a brilliant burst of fireworks on the tips of their wings. Each competed for my attention while waiting to be added to someone’s collection. It was a true testament to the fact that butterflies don’t have an easy life. Rather it struck me as violent, hauntingly brief, and beset by a cycle of constant change.
“And here are my up-and-comers.”
Aikens gestured toward a half dozen disposable paint buckets. All were lined with paper toweling and contained a number of twigs. However, it was the egg-shaped objects attached to them that captured my interest. Each was a perfect chrysalis. Some grew like miniscule fungi, while others were reminiscent of elongated teardrops.
But the most remarkable thing were the variety of colors in which they appeared. One chrysalis was yellow as ripe golden corn, while another resembled a crystal bead laden with orange and black spots. Also vying for my attention were shells bathed in an elegant shade of sea-foam green. A
series of gold dots comprised a band on each of their ends, transforming the cocoons into precious pieces of jade jewelry. Every chrysalis was an exquisite gem. All but for one. The ugly duckling of the set had an exterior as brown and dry as a dead leaf.
“You wouldn’t believe what goes on inside these little shells. The caterpillars melt down into this strange primordial goo. But the cool thing is that it’s kinda like magic. You know,
hocus-pocus
, and a coupla weeks later, you’ve got yourself a hot-looking butterfly. There are more than a few ugly broads I know that should be so lucky. To tell you the truth, these things remind me of a bunch of Egyptian mummies cruising on a round-trip ticket to the afterworld. You’d swear they’re dead, only to have ’em come back to life looking better than ever.”