A butterfly laid her eggs underneath the leaf of a beautiful red rose. After some time, as the rosebuds started to pop out into lovely roses with a sweet smelling scent, the tiny eggs were hatching out and baby caterpillars were running around eating leaves and getting quite fat. One of the caterpillars had no marking on it (such pale creatures being called called albino) and he was not liked very much because he was different. He became quite lonely but his Mummy would come by occasionally and tell him not to worry and all things happen for a reason.
As he got bigger he felt he had to build a shelter called a cocoon which he started to build all around himself. When it was finished he glued it underneath a leaf of the beautiful red rose. Closing the door of his shelter while he was still inside, he was tired out and fell asleep. Now something amazing started happening! His whole body started to change and funny feelings were taking place as wings grew on his back, and some long feelers grew out of his head, the shelter showing the form of his body completely changed, and getting bigger and bigger until he was very cramped inside.
One day his head pushed hard against the top of the cocoon and it started to split open. After much effort his head and feelers popped outside into the sunshine and he rested awhile. His body was too big to get out of the cocoon and he was very stiff and not very mobile because his joints were still dry and crisp so he started to force himself out, and as he did he started to sweat lots of oil that made his body and joints supple so he could squeeze himself out of the cocoon. If someone tries to help a caterpillar out of his cocoon at the wrong time he will die very quickly so was pleased that the got out by himself.
As he walked along the leaf, his wings started to unfold and he became stronger as the sunshine helped all of his tiny white scales to set properly so that he could try to show them he had become a pretty butterfly and his colour was white with little tricolors on his wings. Standing on the leaf, he flapped his wings until he got faster and faster until, with surprise, he lifted off of the leaf and flew up into the air.
It was wonderful as he slipped in and out of the flowers, stopping wherever he wanted to. It was great fun and he learnt to dive and weave in and out very quickly as butterflies do; called “fluttering”. He was flying happily along when, all of a sudden, a bird saw him and flew into catch and eat him up. As the bird came in he felt the bird with his feelers and dived out of the bird’s way and again he got attacked and he fluttered away and hid under some heavy leaves on a tee.
A little later he crawled out of his cover and sat alongside of a tree trunk. He had not been there very long before another bird attacked him so he flew off seeking somewhere to settle where he would not be attacked. He landed on a black stone on the ground and thought he was safe but there was a Goanna lizard in the shadows that had seen him and he ran up very quickly and snapped his jaws together to eat him, but again the butterfly was too quick for the Goanna and flew up into the top of a tree. By the time he made it to the top he was all puffed out, so he stopped there and went to sleep. When he woke up he had a pain in his legs and, looking down, he saw that there were ants that were all gabbing hold of his legs! Quickly, flew up in the air again shaking off the naughty ants. He was very sad that everywhere he went someone would try to eat him, when he came upon a big white Lily and landed in the centre of the flower where no-one would bother him. He said, “I wonder why they have all stopped trying to eat me now?” and he heard a voice say to him, “It is because you are white, and they can all see you, except when you land somewhere white, like a flower or white surface.
So the butterfly came out and sat on the tip of the flower looking at the beautiful colours of everything around him. Like the rainbow it was beautiful.
This is a true picture of a white rainbow with Christopher my son. He could have been helping the butterflies in the picture.
One day the white butterfly was sitting in among the white daises when he saw another rainbow in the sky but it had no colours in – it was pure white. He was so pleased, he flew off to see it. As he was flying along he got attacked again and again but he was diving this way and that ’till he flew inside of the white rainbow where he disappeared from sight. He was free again. Then he heard another voice, only this time it was the White Rainbow himself. “What is the matter? Why are the animals and birds trying to eat you? The butterfly said, “Because I am white they can all see me everywhere I go.”
“Hmm.” said the rainbow, “the next time I come out I will be many colours, and if you fly into me then maybe some of my colours will come off onto you. If you want to try, and it works you will be free. The butterfly flew back to his lily and waited, and one day the rain came along and the clouds started to part letting the sunshine in and the Rainbow came out with all its colours.
The butterfly quickly sprang up and flew to the rainbow again, ducking and diving out of the way of the birds that tried to eat him. As he flew faster into the rain he reached the colours of the rainbow; red, orange, yellow, blue and green, orange, indigo and violet, and the colours touched his wings and he became the most beautiful coloured butterfly.
He said, “thank you very much” to the rainbow and to the lily for being his friends, and he landed wherever he wanted to without being attacked. When he landed on the lily he kept off of the white parts because it made him visible to all the other creatures around him that would like to eat him for their dinner. Now he lived happily ever after.
The beautiful white rainbow and the white butterfly.
This story was originally published in the book Step Beyond Courage by William Lowther SC and is copyright (2018) All rights reserved.
The e-book, Step Beyond Courage has now been released and can be purchased from Amazon at the following link: