Butterflies Are The Coolest

Last fall we went to the American Museum of Natural History for the first time and fell in love with it. My dad, because he is awesome, got us a family membership for Christmas. Yesterday, we finally got there again. My original post here was going to be about the top ten things to see there, or how to help your kids enjoy museums or something to that effect.

That was before we went to the Butterfly Conservatory.

Now you are stuck with an entire post about how freaking cool butterflies are and how you should get to the museum before June 22nd, when the exhibit closes (though it's apparently an annual exhibit, so you can always go next year.)

We met the guy on the right immediately upon walking into the vivarium. 

"Vivarium" means indoor enclosure for raising live plants and animals. I feel like I should have known this already, but I didn't. 

Hot Guy would like a butterfly vivarium in our dream house. This one was like a very hot

greenhouse filled with tropical butterflies. I could handle that. Especially if I could make up names for all the butterflies, since I failed to retain any of that information from today. 

I tried to photograph them flying around. I failed, for which I'm blaming my camera and not

my inability to capture action shots. Thankfully, for as many as there were flying over head, there were almost as many pausing to rest. I want to call this butterfly "Ebony and Ivory". Is that song in your head now? 

I want this  butterfly to be called, "Darthfly", but I would settle for "Gothfly".  

They had a bunch still in their pupal stages, we got to see one emerge. 

We all had butterflies land briefly on our heads, but then this one landed on Hot Guy and would not leave. The butterfly kept using her (it could have been a boy, I have no idea) proboscis to poke at Hot Guy like he was a fruit to be eaten. Because butterflies do not do something as potentially gross as chew food, they just drink liquid through their proboscis. Like I imagine supermodels do. 

And then ANOTHER one landed on Hot Guy. He is like the butterfly whisperer. Or he used magical butterfly attract-er soap in the bathroom. Or something Poor Ironflower wanted one to land on her hand so badly. But they just wouldn't. They only loved Hot Guy. 

Well, Hot Guy and my butt. One landed on right in the middle of mine, I was kindly informed by people behind me. Hot Guy took a picture, but I'm not sharing it with the internet. Anyway, what would you name this butterfly? I keep thinking "Pucci", like that designer that made all those colorful outfits in the '60s.