While photographing some flowers in late summer, I came across a Monarch Butterfly struggling in the grass. There had been a heavy dew that morning, so I was pretty sure her only problem was a damp set of wings.
She was in enough trouble that she didn’t try to escape when I came to her rescue (or maybe she’d already heard about my reputation as a butterfly whisperer):
She walked around a little bit:
And then looked me in the eye to see if I could be trusted:
When she was confident that I didn’t mean any harm, she crawled to the tips of my fingers which I was holding up toward the sun:
She began to slowly fan her wings in and out:
I stood still for more than five minutes with my arm outstretched watching her soak up the sun’s rays.
When her wings were dry, she gently floated up into the clear September sky.