Starting tomorrow, Wednesday, August 20, is the WV Monarch Butterfly Festival at Snowshoe Resort. I found out about it because I ran into this neat article on Ashley and Heather Ness's "Ah Ha Butterfly Ranch" in Ritchie County.
Talk about a neat career, huh?
Well, the festival sounds like a hoot. There are walk-in butterfly pavilions all day. I suppose those are little net rooms you can walk into an be covered in butterflies. I can think of about a million worse ways to spend a Saturday. The schedule describes: "Butterfly conservation discussions, Butterfly gardening , Butterfly World & Butterfly King films, Butterfly host & nectar plants for sale, live Butterfly kits for sale, unique Butterfly gifts & novelties for sale(most are hand-made by West Virginian artisans), caterpillar petting zoo, sign ups for 2008 Monarch King & Queen contest(up thru 12 y/o), Butterfly photo contest last minute entry...and educational games about butterflies."
Um, didja notice that highlighted bit in that description? That's right: Caterpillar petting zoo! I've never seen one of these in operation, but now I'm dying to. I swear. I feel as if I've missed out on a whole lot of butterfly and caterpillar enjoyment as I read these.
Speaking of Saturday, from 2:30 to 3:30 there's a "Butterfly Parade and Mud Puddle Party"! Oh, I can just imagine how ETW's young daughter Sissy would be beyond excited with that combination. She's a big fan of both butterflies and mud puddles. I can only hope the mud puddle party consists of pouring some water into mud holes and letting the kids go wild. Now that would be a festival with kids' fun at its heart.
And, the cherry on top of this local festival sundae is: Caterpillar races! Oh, I can only imagine how exciting these are going to be. It will help stave me over until the next beloved weiner dog race comes around.
Imagine the pressure on the trainers. What exactly could be used to induce a caterpillar to go faster toward a specific goal? And, then, the night before the race breaking out in a cold dread sweat, staring at the caterpillar all night while praying, "no morphing, no morphing, no morphing."
Has anyone been to this before? It's an annual event. I'm not sure yet, but I'm pretty sure that Curmy and me will be taking this one in.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
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15 comments:
All this butterfly and caterpillar stuff is cool, but there is a dark side. Have you ever seen the caterpillar pits where they fight caterpillars? They attach barbs to each of the caterpillar's legs and turn them loose in a fighting ring... It's a horrible sight I tell you. Imagine how they have to train those caterpillars to get them that agressive, it's so sad.
From bad reality TV to this . . .
The Evil Twin used to work with Ashley Ness, so we know them. Sounds like fun...
I've never been to the festival, but it sounds pretty cool.
My retainer wall on the side of our property was a breeding ground for them earlier this year.
Ron, Oh NOes!11!!!1 Now that sounds like a real bug tussle.
Angryman, In the immortal words of Buzzard Daddy, "You'll get old one of these days too."
ETW, It totally sounds like fun!
Diva, that must've been so neat! What kinds?
I'm totally making a pair of underwear that reads on the front:
"Caterpillar Petting Zoo"
SOMETHING has to get my wife to bite.
One wonders if they make deep fried caterpillars as snacks from teh ones that don't win their heats.
Considering the number of caterpillars I remove from my swimming pool filter basket everyday, I'm in the wrong business. I could start my own butterfly farm! It does sound like fun, though. I've been to the butterfly pavillion at the Museum of Scinece in Durham, but we just walked through it, and there were no extracurricular activities.
I really enjoyed meeting you!! I wrote about it, but I removed you from the photo, as you wished.
As long as they don't put some of those nice stinging saddlebacks or Io moth caterpillars in the petting zoo....(ooh, mommy, look at this purty little green an' brown one........)It won't be long before the monarchs start migrating-there are places around here where you can sit in a mountain gap and see a fairly steady stream of butterflies going by for days.
*****JEALOUS*******
Sounds like a lovely event. I really hate Snowshoe, but it's probably less annoying outside ski season!
I say, TAKE A LOT OF PICTURES for us poor blokes who won't be making to the caterpillar pettin' this year.
Gawd, I've heard it all now.
Hey, I heard Gary Glitter is headed there too
malach- what about his "heart attack"?
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