Me neither, but we found out yesterday. Seems only three (3) butterflies are required to hold and heavily promote/advertise a Butterfly Festival. We traveled to the Shadybrook Farm Butterfly extravaganza on Sunday only to discover what may have been the world’s lamest “Festival” – of any kind. They had a caged up butterfly bush with three – 1,2,3 – butterflies inside. WOW! That was entertaining for all of 18 seconds.
There were arts and crafts for the kids that consisted of a sticker sheet and a piece of blank paper. On a half dozen picnic tables, there were coloring sheets and cheap crayons that were unusable because they were melting in the sun. Shadybrook Farm also had dollar store quality plastic visors ($2), shirts ($8) and butterfly wings ($5) for sale, for coloring with markers (available to borrow, only with a purchase). But that’s not all! The kicker was the $3 fee to get and release a butterfly. So, just so you understand fully – they wanted you to give them $3 for the chance to hold in an envelope – for a brief moment – a butterfly, only to set it free with all the other suckers who coughed up $3. Yeah, the 2007 Butterfly Festival!
We spent the rest of the day poolside, where we saw fluttering by my mom’s cage-free bushes at least 4 butterflies – each with a rye smile on their face.