Killing Jar

I stepped into the small coffee shop on the corner of the street and walked into the back room so I could grab my apron and put it on. It was a dark blue colour, and luckily I had remembered today so I wore a plain black t-shirt underneath, unlike other times when I wore red or some other colour that looked absolutely ridiculous with the dark blue.

I stepped up behind the counter, saying my hello’s to the other employees here and opened up the till that wasn’t being used and ushered customers over to me.

“Hey,” I started and took orders off of all the customers, giving the orders to Shaun who made them and handed them over to them.

I had moved in with Stef a year ago, and I have to admit that I have never been happier. It was a whole lot nicer to be able to fall asleep next to her, wake up next to her and not stress about having to catch the bus to get back home later that day – I could lay in for as long as I wanted and not bother about anything.

Most weekends were spent collecting new butterflies for Stef’s collection, or me just staring at them: seeing all of the different patterns that they held and all of the different colours they tended to be.

They were beautiful, butterflies were. They started off as some incredibly ugly caterpillar, made a cocoon around themselves, and when they came out they were completely transformed. They had changed into some beautiful creature that could fly about and just look happy against summer days.

We had caught a new one yesterday, called an Orange-Tip; the top side of it was mainly white, with the body being black and the outsides of the wings having a thick stripe of orange and a thinner one of brown on the outside. The ring around the wing was a dashed black and white line that ran around the outside of the wings. But the underside was fantastic; it was almost like it was supposed to be for camouflage. It was white with green splodges that blended in with the plants they landed on. It was gorgeous.

We collected it and placed it in the glass jar for it to eventually die out and crispen. I’m not sure what my opinion on killing these butterflies is, but I guess people do it… The glass jar was almost like their killing jar, it was the end of their life and it was the last place they would be alive in.

But I liked to gaze into their killing jar for hours, looking closely at the different butterflies that had been collected over the years. We should probably poke holes in the top of some of them, allowing them to breathe for a few more moths.

Orange-Tip Butterfly
Orange-Tip underside