All About Butterflies
Rick Mikula, a world-renowned butterfly expert, stood with a monarch butterfly in his hand on Wednesday in front of 90 enthusiastic Broad Street Elementary school students, who watched his every move.
Mikula took the butterfly and placed it in his mouth, much to the surprise of the audience.
The students gasped, thinking Mikula had harmed the butterfly, but he promptly took it out of his mouth and placed it in the cage.
After a second, the butterfly spread its wings and fluttered.
"Don't do that at home," Mikula said.
Mikula, who is based in Hazelton, has been lecturing for 28 years and has written eight books about butterflies.
He enjoys his lectures so much, he hates to cancel. After presenting to two groups of Broad Street students, Mikula had to drive five hours and have his appendix removed.Mikula's lecture was sponsored by the Butler Garden Club. Butler resident Julie Dandoy, who used to teach second grade at Emily Brittain Elementary, belongs to the club.Dandoy had Mikula speak at Emily Brittain a few years ago and enjoyed his presentation."The kids really like anything they can see, touch or experience," Dandoy said. "Kids can read a lot in books, but by bringing Rick maybe he can inspire them to be a scientist."Mikula's presentation was visual and informative: He dressed like a butterfly with large wings and antennas.He said there are 720 unique types of butterflies in the United States, including 147 in Pennsylvania.Mikula said he stumbled onto his career by accident.
"My career started with me just playing with bugs," Mikula said. "At first, I hated bugs. But then one day a butterfly landed in my hands with a silver question mark on its back, and I wanted to find out what it was."With his interest piqued, Mikula went and found out what kind of butterfly it was."It was called a silver question mark butterfly," Mikula said. "I should have known that the whole time."He had many types of butterflies mounted in cases in the background, but he doesn't kill butterflies."Anyone can kill a butterfly, keeping them alive is the hard part," Mikula said. "All the butterflies in those cases died on their own."One request Mikula often receives is from people who want to release butterflies at weddings or funerals.All are given an envelope with a butterfly in it and are told to release them at the same time.Mikula told the students they too can become experts."Whenever I read a lot of the books on butterflies, I found a lot of mistakes, so I wrote my own," Mikula said. "But if you guys want, I encourage you to try so that next time I go to buy a book about butterflies, maybe one of you will have written it."
