No, I Don't Like Butterflies. Yes, You May Harass Me Mercilessly.

The BBQ Pit
1

Really. I don’t like butterflies.

I’m not phobic about them or anything. I just…well, I just…okay, yeah, they kinda scare me. When they start fluttering around me, I want them to go away. And if waving or brushing them away doesn’t work, then yes, I’ll actually squish them.

My mom tells me a story about when I was a very young child. Apparently, I had a series of nightmares involving large swarms of butterflies. I had these curtains in my bedroom, with an abstract geometric pattern on them. When the soft summer breeze blew through my open bedroom window, and the streetlight outside of our house shone just right onto the curtains, my sleepy-four-year-old brain saw swarms of butterflies coming in to my room. My parents figured it out after a couple of weeks, and my mom says that she immediately yanked the curtains down and put up a nice Swiss dot pattern, and the nightmares stopped.

But some sort of damage was done to my tender little psyche, and to this day, I simply do not like butterflies. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t. Not in real life, not in pictures, not in clothing patterns, not under glass. I don’t run screaming from them, but if I can avoid them, I do.

Unfortunately, my six-year-old daughter LOVES butterflies. Kitties are her favorite, but butterflies are a REAL close second. She took a field trip to a butterfly house a couple of weeks ago, too. Thank Goddess they already had enough chaperones.

Go ahead and make fun of me now. Please. I haven’t been harassed in a very long while, and I’m due. :slight_smile:

2

Please!! I hope you do not throw your fears on your daughter. I am not going to make fun of you. You are too pathetic. If you wrote to Dear Abby, she would tell you to see a therapist. If you have an HMO, all the better. A Psychiatrist will perscribe you medicine to help that.

But please, PLEASE, do not screw up your daughter.

3

You squish butterflies?! :eek:

4

Although a little out of the ordinary, I don’t see why it’s a big deal. It’s perfectly understandable, given the cause, and no more irrational than many other fears.

5

Oh mercy sakes, no. She does know that “Mama doesn’t like butterflies,” but that’s it, for now. I’ll explain the why later, when she’s old enough to understand. She’s got all kinds of butterfly stuff (hell, I’ve bought half of it myself!) and she DID go on that field trip to the butterfly house. I just didn’t chaperone that trip. :slight_smile:

And I don’t need meds for this. It’s not a phobia that prevents me from functioning. It’s just an “Ew! A butterfly! Get it away!” thing, like some people react to bees or spiders. But because it’s butterflies we’re talking here, I do catch a lot of flak for it. Besides, I’m already medicated for other stuff. I don’t need any additions to my current chemical cocktail.

Ummmm…yeah, I’ve been known to do that occasionally. But only when provoked. :eek:

6

But butterflies are pretty!!

Did you know that the Spanish word for butterfly, mariposa, is also slang for a gay man?

7

[HIJACK]

matt, are the spanish words for fairy and butterfly at all etymologically connected?

[/HIJACK]

8

No, I did not know that. But I’m quite certain that the butterflies I’ve squished have been actual six-legged multi-eyeballed bewinged insects. I’ll be a little more careful next time I feel the need to squish one, though. :smiley:

9

Um…I’m afraid of butterflies, too. I’d never squish one, though - they’re too scary for me to get close enough to squish them. My phobia extends to birds as well. I just don’t like flying things. I don’t scream and run or try to shoo them away or anything. I just freeze in terror until they go away. Naturally, the act of going completely motionless attracts butterflies and they tend to land on me more than on other people.

I inherited my fear from my mother, who never did try to hide it. I try very hard not to show mine, but I think that’s been a bad strategy, since that means I can’t give an excuse for avoiding free-flight exhibits. There are pictures of me, completely white in the face, acting as a perch for several rather aggressive lorikeets at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. When my daughter’s hamster died, she asked me if she could get (naturally) a bird. It took a great deal of skillful negotiation and I had to do a lot of research to show that birds are just too difficult to maintain, but we came to a compromise and now own a large lizard.

Now, reptile phobias - those are just plain silly.

10

Oh you ain’t the only one, I hate those buggers. I get the heebie jeebies when one flies across the lawn (luckily we live halfway up a mountain in SLC where not even fleas and ticks and ants bother to live, so they’re highly rare). Them and all often-flying insects. Gimme cockroaches and other beetles, millipedes and their ilk, but not flying bugs, particularly butterflies. Why? I don’t like them touching me. I really don’t like that they fly so erratically. At least flies (I don’t mind flies touching me for some reason) go straight to where they want to go. Hell, I’ve kissed cockroaches when I was younger for kicks, and petted them and all. I’d never squish a cockroach or other beetle-family member. I didn’t even have a negative experience with butterflies. I just don’t like them touching me and their erraticality. I hate them. I could never live along the Monarch route, to have a foot of dead NASTY THINGS in my yard to wade through. I nearly died of gross+fear when my house got infected with termites, and they started spawning in the main entryway, and they all died in a wingy, leggy mess. I refused to go through that walkway (and thus to the second floor of the house) until they were all gone. But butterflies are much worse. I can see them better, sure, but they’re HUGE and they LAND ON YOU and they’re just like Luna Moths but nastier.

…hey wait, I did have a nasty Luna Moth experience before I hated winged bugs for the most part. One nearly jumped on my face, and then later that day a swarm of wasps chased me…maybe that triggered it. DAMN YOU BUGS, I HOPE YOU ARE PLAGUED WITH PESTILENCE…wait, no, that won’t work. ¬_¬ I’m bad at insults, especially toward things that are used in insults themselves.

11

You did ask to be made fun of. I am not sure if you live in an area that butterflies swarm in large numbers (I do not). Although I do see their cousin, the moth at times. Almost the same, but a icky, grey color. I have yet to go to the butterfly house in town. I had a girlfriend who tripped on birds. We were at an ice house playing with someone’s pet bird. The bird started to fly. Having the wings clipped, the bird did not go far, but did go in our direction. She knocked me down, with her falling on top of me trying to get away. It was maybe our third date and I was considering not having a fourth.

Seriously, I do think you should face this fear. Just so you can enjoy time with your daughter.

12

Road Rash, not always true. For a couple of years, we had a house on 50 acres on a mountaintop, and I was amazed at the variety of moths up there. Including one type that was a beautiful white that almost glowed. I saw many different colors of moths, many almost as pretty as butterflies.

Persephone, this is not usually my style, but you asked for it: what in the world is wrong with you, girl?!? Call a doctor, get help, boil water, do something!! You are seriously twisted! Much more so than people who hate women, hate homosexuals, hate people of different religions, etc. I mean, all that stuff is understandable, but hating butterflies? For God’s sake, get a grip on yourself, woman!:stuck_out_tongue:

13

Butterflies are harmless. But moths are a different thing altogether. They are mindless evil bastards.

No, I’m not joking. I really hate moths. Exactly what the difference is between them and butterflies I couldn’t tell you. But butterflies don’t batter against lightbulbs or lurk around your bedroom at night.

When you squish moths they are entirely dry dust. They are flying mummies. They are the undead husks of departed souls.

But this thing about butterflies is totally uncalled for. You should see someone about it.

14

**Road Rash, ** don’t make me flame you for not being able to read, because I did say this to you in response to your first post…

Follow norinew’s fine example. That was good. :wink:

15

for the butterfly foks
http://www.acnatsci.org/kids/whatsthedif/whatsthediffimages/butterfly.jpg

For the Moth foks
http://www.npws.nsw.gov.au/images/moth.JPG

16

In an odd twist on the original post–

My sister is terrified of caterpillars but is ok with butterflies.
:confused:

We went to the Butterfly Exhibit last spring at the Museum of Natural History in New York City. It is a greenhouse full of butterflies that you get to walk through.

The long line wound along the side of the greenhouse to the other end so you went through greenhouse the opposite way the line outside moved and exited the big room the greenhouse was in the same way you had entered the big room (If that makes sense.)

You got to look inside the butterfly filled greenhouse the whole time you walked by it and there were picture, detailed information about the different kind of butterflies and moths and their life cycles. As we all know the caterpillar stage plays a significant part in that life cycle.

Yep, lots of pictures and dead examples of caterpillars along that line. We’d warn my sister when one of those was coming into view so she was ‘prepared’. She, as all of us did, loved the butterfly parts of the exhibit.

Really weird were the large displays of real but dead butterflies and moths pinned to boards in size, color, kind order set up just before you got around to the far end of the exhibit and prepared to enter the greenhouse with the live, flying all over the place, butterflies. I remember thinking, “I hope those live butterflies don’t find out that are a whole lot of their fellow butterflies that had been captured, killed?, and stuck on those boards!” Can you imagine the movie, The Birds, but instead of birds there were butterflies!
:smiley: It was a long day in that museum even thought it was fun.

17

I don’t hate butterflies but I was positively creeped out by that “Temptation Island” episode that had the girl holding a butterfly by the body and letting the wings caress this guy. It absolutely gave me the heebie jeebies.

:shudder:
[OT] I also loath and despise that “Butterfly Kisses” song too

18

I’m suspicious of butterflies as I think they are really just moth spies. Moths are evil. Horribly evil. Batting endless against the light near the front entrance of homes, sometimes landing on you or following you in at night. They flutter around your bedroom making annoying noise, smacking into you occasionally and if they get caught in a hallogen light the stink is unbearable. All moths must die, and if the butterflies are in with them they too must die.

19

What’s yer stance on butterflyed porkchops? Yummmm

20

I’ve trained myself to hate butterflies. It’s hard: they’re awful pretty, and pretty harmless. But they’re insects. I hate insects. Insects are nasty, squirmy, multi-legged things that want to burrow into your flesh and lay eggs in your body cavity. If I feel this way about, say, earwigs, than it is nothing but basest lookism to not feel the same way about butterflies. So, after long, grueling months of training, I have taught myself to hate this horrid, flying bug. Logical consistency demands it.

Up next: ladybugs.