A New Stephen King Novel Idea: The Butterflies

The Butterfly Exhibit

On Monday, we decided to meet some of my friends at the local mall (not to shop, as would be my dream) but to visit a local "butterfly exhibit".

World's Worst Picture of Butterfly "Exhibit"

What you can't see from the outside of this sophisticated installation is that the tent is actually full of ... you guessed it... insects with big wings called butterflies!!!

After we paid our $15 to get in, I told Gillian that she could feed the butterflies with the q-tip full of red gunk that we were handed by a woman who also told us not to step on the butterflies. It was a horrible warning that almost became a reality as Bryce bombed around that tent eating pretzels while butterflies latched onto his shoes.  Not kidding, ask Gillian, she is still talking about it 3 days later.

There are no pictures from inside the tent because it was like a scene from the Stephen King novel, Birds. The butterflies hung with their gross insect legs from the top and sides of the tent, and a few unlucky (or smart) butterflies laid on the ground, hoping that someone would end their lifetime stay at Butterfly Guantanamo.

While I tried to conceal my panic that we were in an oversize fly trap, Gillian stared in horror at the butterflies flapping around. A woman about my age started ducking and screaming as she was being attacked by a lone angry butterfly.  This tent was very small and there was limited space for an adult to carry on like this. Simultaneously, Bryce came dangerously close to murdering a butterfly, and Gillian burst into tears and started yelling, "take me out, take me out". I had one of these little bugs glued to my q-tip, which I dropped and ran without looking back. I may have also screamed a little.

Bryce seemed unaware that anything weird had happened. He continued to eat his pretzels and didn't express any interest when my friend, Lisa, (who also dragged her son to butterfly hell for 30 seconds) took the kids on a large, motorized animal ride around the mall.

  After the animal ride, we blew out of that mall as fast we blew out of that butterfly tent. Bryce's goodwill ended when his pretzels ran out and Gillian's lasted only moments longer, after she saw Wetzel's Pretzels and asked me for them 10x before dissolving into tears (10 seconds after this photo was taken).

When we arrived home, we discovered that a very large tree was being removed across the street. We sat outside and watched as they cut down the tree, branch by branch. Thankfully, we didn't see any stray butterflies!