Rupture Charlie Sterchi
Frustrated with what he deemed an "unfair lack of exotic butterfly
complimentary keepsakes" and determined to get his money's worth, Jim
Barrow, a retired real estate developer, returned by night to the Butterfly
Jungle Vivarium in Gainesville, cut a hole in the hurricane-proof steel mesh
perimeter with a chainsaw, and, parting from the concrete path for the rocks
and soil of the "jungle," began collecting resting butterflies in one of his
late wife's Tupperwares. Having gathered a dozen butterflies and, for all
anyone knows, reaching for a thirteenth, Barrow seems to have fallen into a
water feature, fractured his skull on a rock, and drowned. Vivarium staff
found him in the morning submerged in the pond, his face sucked into the
muck at the pebbled bottom, koi eating of the bloated wafers floating from
his fanned-out coat pockets. His red-lidded Tupperware of
suffocated butterflies bobbed at the pond's edge. The Butterfly Jungle has
closed indefinitely as the USDA attempts to contain what could (but, they
concede, probably won't) be one of the greatest invasive species
introduction events in Florida history. In any event, the hole Mr. Barrow
chain-sawed in the mesh has been patched with a bright blue polyester tarp,
curtailing for now the butterfly exodus from the vivarium and into Florida's
promise of hammock, honey, and soured milk. Vivarium staff have been sent
home without pay.
Charlie Sterchi's work has appeared in Subtropics, The Literary Review, Wigleaf and
elsewhere. He lives in Nashville.
Read CS's postcard.
Read more of his work in the archive.
Detail of image of nitrate film on main page from The Turconi Project.
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