Читать книгу Shaped by Snow. Defending the Future of Winter онлайн

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We were finishing our lunch at Emerald Lake when my mother suddenly grabbed my net off the ground. She leapt into a field of wildflowers, sweeping the net in front of her. She had a triumphant expression on her face when she returned.

Trapped inside the net was a beautiful black and yellow butterfly. Lepidoptera.

It was much larger than any of the insects I had caught so far. I was a little shocked; I had never really thought my mom to be the bug-collecting type. She smiled when I said as much.

“I wasn’t really into bugs. But I liked picking up bones on the side of the road.”

I was torn. The creature was so beautiful, with long, delicate wings. I didn’t want to kill it. But my biology teacher would probably give me extra points.

“Baqui, what kind of a butterfly is this?”

My grandpa ambled over, placing his hands on knobby knees as he bent over the net.

“Swallowtail. See these tips on its bottom wings? They look like the forked tail of a swallow.”

I placed it in the kill jar as gently as I could. It was too big even for the jar; its wings flapped against the glass. I slid it in my backpack and tried not to think too hard about my decision on the hike down.