BUTTERFLIES: WINTER'S BOOBY PRIZE

Priscilla Becker, a poet and a contributor to "Going Hungry: Writers on Desire, Self-Denial and Overcoming Anorexia", assumed the podium at the KGB Bar in Manhattan one night a couple of weeks ago looking a bit shaky. "I'm still recovering from my subway ride over here," she apologised to the audience. "I was puked on--no, no," she said looking at a friend seated at the bar, who had presumably accompanied her on the ill-fated ride. "I was puked at." He nodded. "On the bus earlier I was puked on; on the subway I was puked at."

Alas, it is that time of year, that sniffly, achy, influenza-filled time of year, when such a distinction is merited. It is nasty outside--cold, overcast and full of the illness of strangers. So it is all the more essential to find the pockets of the city that feel like a haven of sorts, a retreat, an oasis, perhaps even puke-free. That is why the New Yorkers among you need to brave public transportation and head up to the Museum of Natural History on Manhattan's Upper West Side, where the seasonal Butterfly Conservatory is all aflutter in its 11th year.

The museum has one of the country's greatest repositories of lepidoptera. On a trip there recently, I found myself transfixed by the chrysalis of the monarch butterfly, which is a stunning turquoise colour and boasts a crown of gold dots. Most of the other chrysalises looked like dead leaves, to be touched with a stick, if at all. But the monarch chrysalises were shimmering, jewel-like.

The butterflies, which flop around a modestly sized vivarium, vary widely in the colour, texture, size and translucency of their wings. Some were dark and moth-like; others a deep-red velvet, almost like the surface of a plush animal. I spied butterflies with wings that sported art nouveau motifs, others with patterns one finds on shawls made in India.

At a time of year when the natural world seems the cause of omnipresent suffering, the Butterfly Conservatory is a lovely reminder of nature's gifts. It is hard to be surrounded by all of those flapping, iridescent wings and not feel almost painfully inspired.

~ MEGAN BUSKEY

Picture credit: mutednarayan (via Flickr)