A costume designer repairs a baby butterfly’s wing
Then watches in delight as it flies away.
thousands of miles, to Mexico, and for their multi-generational trip back to the northern United States and Canada.
She p ut a picture of the broken wing on Facebook, anda friend sent her a stepRomy McCloskey is a cosby-step tutorial video that tume designer by training, showed how to fix it. with a specialty in intricate McCloskey said she didn’t bead work that demands hesitate. precision. She also raises “Because of the work I and releases monarch butdo, it was no-brainer,” said terflies at her Texas home. McCloskey, who is a master
It just so happened that embroiderer by trade, mostly these two skills intersected doing work for independent on a recent day when she knocked one down, fatally films through her company, actually performed surgery injuring it, and left another Faden Design Studios. on one of her injured mondamaged. She took out the tools she arch’s wings, an operation “It had a crack in the needed: Tweezers, small scis- that saved its life and allowed cocoon,” McClosky said. “I sors, glue ,awireh a nger,a it to fly away to migrate. thought, ‘please don’t let towel and talcum powder.
“Hopefully he’s having it die.’” She also had a spare wing a margarita down in MexA few days later, she from a butterfly that had ico with his budd ies,”said watched as butterflies started died days earlier. She had McCloskey, 43, a mother of to e merge,f rom the cracked kept the butterfly thinking two boys. cocoon and eight others. The it was beautiful and that she
The butterfly catastrophe- one with the cracked cocoon mightdisplayitinashadow turned-victory tale began a came out with a mangled box on her wall. But instead, few weeks ago when McClo- wing and was unable to fly. she said she found a better skey was at her home in subMcCloskey felt badly about use for it. urban Houston and looked it, knowing this meant the A migrating monarch — over at her cocoons, only to monarch could not make its which can live for several see her house cat Sloki swat- famed migration to Mexico. months — doesn’t have nerve ting at them, thinking they Monarchs are renowned for endings in its wings, so she were toys. Sloki’s paw had their annual journey, often wasn’t concerned about hurt- ing it. As the video instructs, she immobilized the butterfly by placing a wire hanger over its body, then carefully cut the mangled wing away and glued the replacement wing on what remained of the injured wing. She waited for the glue to dry, then sprinkled a small amount of talcum powder on t hewingsto prevent them from sticking together due to any glue that had not fully dried.
The whole thing took 10 minutes.
“You have to be sure the donor wing you have fits,” she said. “It overlaps by less than a millimeter, and I used the tiniest bit of glue. It is such a scant amount of glue.”
She put the butterfly back in its cage with some food and left it overnight.
“I woke up the next morn- ing and said, ‘Please be alive,’ ” she said.
She saw it moving, and knew the surgery was a success.
“I said, ‘All right, buddy, let’s go,’ ” she said.
She went into her garden and released her other eight butterflies. Then she looked at the one with the prosthetic wing.
“He climbed on my finger, checked out the surroundings and then took off,” she said. “He landed on some bushes, and sure enough, when I went to reach for him, he flew up in the direction of the sun.”
Thatwas the l astshesaw of him, she said, flush with pride.
“He was on his mission,” she said.