I Hate The Doctor!

Or maybe Alvin is wondering if a mad scientist is going to dissect him.  Never!  I just thought the responsible thing to do after any of Timothia’s offspring hatch would be to test them for the OE parasite.

Here’s what I did.  Obviously I put on some gloves in case he was infected.  I took a piece of clear Scotch tape, and placed it across his abdomen.  I then removed the tape and placed it under my mini-microscope (which I purchased from this location Live Monarch.com).  From a scientific point of view it was pretty fascinating observing the results.  After staring through this microscope for at least 20 minutes and trying to be as precise as possible, I couldn’t really detect any significant OE spores.  As best I can tell, I counted at most 3 “brownish” looking little football things (description of the OE spore) but couldn’t detect any significant infection.  Even the 3 “brown things” I saw I couldn’t tell if it was the spore, or perhaps some color from his wing I might have taken off with the tape.

So, since he didn’t appear to be infected, I took Alvin out to the Butterfly Bush to get some nectar.  Perhaps I traumatized him from playing doctor because he just continued to sit there for a couple of hours and didn’t appear to drink (he was moving around and was still stretching his wings).

Suddenly this little (when I say little, it was the smallest Monarch I’ve ever seen) “floozy” came flying by, apparently attracted to Alvin’s good looks.  Unfortunately for her, the mad scientist (that’s me!) was observing Alvin when she landed on the Butterfly Bush.  I caught her (she looked pretty worn out, colors faded) and took her in for testing as well.  She passed the test, so I released her.

On the other hand, poor Alvin must still be a little young for dating since he didn’t seem to much care for this female who flew by.

To put an end to this long winded story, since it was getting late and I wanted to make sure Alvin was fully rested before moving on to wherever, I brought him inside for the night and I’ll release him tomorrow.

I Hate The Doctor

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