Reflections of Nature #3

Because of the beauty, power of flight, and complete metamorphosis found in butterflies and moths, these insects frequently are found in Native American myths. We can call attention to the belief held by the Blackfeet that dreams are brought to us in sleep by a butterfly. Their sign for a butterfly was a design roughly in the shape of a maltese cross with one arm horizontal and the other vertical. This sign was painted on a lodge to indicate that the style and method of painting the lodge were taught to the lodge owner in a dream. It was also the custom for a Blackfoot woman to embroider the sign of a butterfly on a small piece of buckskin and tie this in her baby’s hair when she wishes it to go to sleep. At the same time, she sings to the child a lullaby in which the butterfly is asked to come flying about and put the child to sleep. The Blackfeet stated that the butterfly is soft and pretty and moves gently and that if you look at it for a long time you will go to sleep.

I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.
—Joseph Addison, The Spectator, 1712

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.
—Henry David Thoreau

Half the modern drugs could well be thrown out the window, except that the birds might eat them.
—Martin H. Fischer

The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
—Author Unknown

God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.
—Jacques Deval

Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever remains to them? —Rose F. Kennedy

A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.
—Chinese Proverb

Beware those who promise to build a bridge where there is no river....—Egan Billings