Don’t touch butterflies

When I was a little boy, my mother told me not to catch or even touch butterflies. Their wings are made out of millions of little scales that can be just destroyed by the touch of a little boy, of course. So I tried to avoid touching them, of course, not to hurt them. There was this one butterfly I once fouund in the fresh snow in Poland. It was obviously very slow and cold. I took it home as far as I could. I did not quite understand that it would die even when in a warm environment. I just did not want it to be cold. I remember letting it climb onto my jacket sleeve. It then slowly crawled toward my face, which must have been warmer than then sleeve and was, of course also higher than my sleeve. I left it in our building next to a heater. THis was the closest I could offer to a summer.
On the last trip to California, another butterfly incident. The monster durango has a huge water cooler, of course. It is a gigantic dragnet for hundreds of insects. A horrible thing. One of them turned out to be this beautiful large monarch butterfly. It was stuck to the cooler and obviously about to die in a very horrible place. I (for some weird reason) still did not want to touch it, so I took it onto the key chain that came with the car. The animal managed to cling onto it, and so I was able to free it from its dodge durango trap. The butterfly was injured, of course. It posed for the picture below and then flew away, just to be caught by a bird a few seconds later. At least this way it became part of the california food chain.
Please forgive my expression in the picture. I obviously see the injury of the animal and know that it will die very soon.