The Afterlife For Beginners

I'm writing this eighteen years later to the day. July 9, 2003. A relentlessly white-hot day that left after-images on the eyeballs. So different from today, and most every other day this year. Oh, they say the world is on fire, but in New Orleans it hasn't stopped raining for months.

Another thing they say: Pure rainwater is good for the skin. Well. I'll tell you what isn't so good-- all that sticky heat in the summer of 2003.

Lord, how it made you want to scratch out every mosquito bite until your legs looked like measles. People talked a lot about West Nile. That was the year I hoped all my problems would be solved if I grew pot marigold without herbicides or pesticides and then ground it up in a paste to make a salve.

Also, it would be helpful if I drank some of it as tea, although the tea was insipid. Not as insipid as chamomile, mind you, but we're not talking any Hawaiian Kona.

Calendula. Pot marigold. Same thing. It's easy to grow, which is something more than nothing, I suppose. Butterflies seem to like it.

Of course, my Gulf Fritillaries like anything. Do they sip on all those nectars, or do they choose those flowers for a pretty place to pose? A butterfly guy once told me some species of butterflies never eat. They're born without the ability. No intestinal tract. No mouth.

See, they're not a life-form at all. They're the afterlife of the caterpillar. Flying sex organs there to do one last thing. Lay the eggs and exit stage left.

This is why, the butterfly guy said, the ancients thought butterflies represented the souls of the dead. They were dead. Zombies.

He said some other stuff too, but I forgot what. Either he was making it up, or it was true. Dealer's choice. But he's not the only one to say caterpillars lose their nervous system, cell by cell, all their thoughts and all their memories, when they go into their cocoons to become someone else.

My Gulf Fritillaries are not zombies, I have decided. Or, if they are, I won't find out, because I don't intend to look it up.

So.

July 9, 2003. Floppy hat. White zinc sunscreen. Bandanna regularly dipped in cold water to keep the back of my neck cool. The Styrofoam icebox with all the soft drinks. A real expedition.

Although we might have over-prepared because the instructions were easy to follow as any map. Drive around the south side of the lake somewhere around the Lakefront Arena and the Army Reserve Building. Walk around and listen. Boom!

We heard babies crying and an adult singing, and then we saw one of the adults fly in to deliver food, and there it was. The first breeding record nest of the Gray Kingbird in Louisiana. Nothing easier. We have witnessed a great moment in Kingbird history.

The heat was brutal. Another guy came along-- a serious guy with serious equipment. There was a need for photo documentation. Probably he wrote a paper too. We headed off to leave him to it.

Back in the car, my friend and I drove around some to soak up the AC. “That was too easy,” he said. “What do we do now?” We were both out of work is the thing. You think everybody in New Orleans was taking time out of their busy day to chase Gray Kingbirds?

“A bar,” I suggested. “The frosty drink.”

“The frosty drinks are free at the casino.”

“I need to lay off the casino a while. They already kicked me out twice since 9-11.” They'd kicked him out five times, but I didn't have to tell him that since he'd been there.

We didn't play for entertainment. We played for money, and the casino preferred to be the one who won the money. So we changed our names a lot. Everything's going great, and we're all cashing in, and then some Egyptian kid thinks it's somehow a good idea to fly planes into buildings, and now everybody's looking harder at fake IDs.

You always think a hustle is going to peter out nice and slow, but it doesn't. Lightning strikes from some crazy angle, and you're off the field, that's it, game over.

In the end, my friend and I went to the zoo and sat in the shade with our snow cones. Also a box of popcorn. The peacocks insist the popcorn is theirs, and somebody's got to eat it, and I'd rather stick with a chocolate snow cone, heavy on the condensed milk and whipped cream. A cherry on top won't go amiss either.

So we popcorn the peacock. Then the peahen bops in with a string of chicks to get their cut too.

“So where do they live usually?” My friend knows peafowl live all over Audubon Park. He means the Kingbirds. Like, what's so amazing that yet another gray bird is breeding in Louisiana. Between the mockingbirds and the shrikes, there isn't any shortage.

“They say these probably came from Florida, but I dunno. I've seen them in Panama. Trinidad too. Down south in the tropics.”

“This is the tropics. I can't figure out how to get rid of those banana trees that keep coming back in the yard.”

“I'll take one of them off your hands,” I said. “It'll have to be pretty late because I'm not doing any digging until after dark. This heat's killing me.”

I still have that banana tree. It dies down in winter but it's like he said. It shoots up like Jack's beanstalk every year. So if you don't want one, don't take one. Banana tree highway is a one-way street. Once you got it, you got it.

Pot marigold is different. It goes away every year, and I have to hunt up fresh seeds and plant them again every time. At some point, I got busy and forgot, and now I don't grow them anymore.

As for the Gray Kingbirds, they nested a couple more years. Then it was 2005, and I don't know if they came back after Hurricane Katrina. Lots of people didn't, not just them. It's so easy to lose track.

Zombie souls or not, my butterflies mostly did come back. Except the monarchs, of course, but everybody knows that sad story.

Also, I've got these pond dragonflies the size of something from the Paleozoic. Were they always so big? Kites dart and dive between the raindrops to catch dinner. One dragonfly will supply all your calorie needs for hours. A good thing too, since hunting birds like kites would rather not fly so much in all this rain.

Another eighteen years from now, this place will be underwater. But sometimes I think it'll only be eighteen minutes.

Photo Credits

Feature Photo: Calendula by Anastasiya Romanova on Unsplash

Central Photo: "Gulf Fritillary or Passion Butterfly (Agraulis vanillae)" by USFWS/Southeast is licensed under CC-BY-2.0

Rainy Bottom Photo: Author's Peachfaced Lovebird at the window by the Author

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