Giant Butterfly

Today was a typical day in the rainforest. It was grey and overcast and beating it down for a good 6 hours until after lunch when it finally gave in and was just grey. This meant a shorter working day for me. I have no reason to go walking around the plant as, 1 , I would get wet, pretty obvious, 2, there are no butterflies about to rescue, 3, I hate getting wet, pretty obvious again. That’s basically it , I hate rain and I hate getting wet, so I sit in my office watching the busy people walking passed my doorway and say Hola to all who will reply and try and pretend I am busy. Which is pretty hard when the job is going smoothly. So when the rain had finished after lunch and many many pages of the internet later, I went to the plant and had a look round at some of the work which was being undertaken, two new generators being installed and some concrete bases being laid, and the turbo-expander being stripped as it had shit its bearings down its trousers. I was taking a quick look around some of the screens and found a few small butterflies that had hidden well out of the rain and were in need of removing from the screens and I was walking amongst the columns and coolers and and I thought a bird flew very close to my legs round the pumps, it was very quick and very big, the birds here are warblers and I haven’t found the name yet but small things flitting about catching bugs and moths, so I turned quick and this thing had flown away very quickly so I was running around after this thing because it didn’t seem right. Maybe ill or injured or wrapped up in spiders webs, they are huge webs and very strong stuff, I once found a bat wrapped up and dead in a spiders web. So I saw it skipping about and I now realised that it was an insect, moth of butterfly but it was huge, I kept chasing it and I was losing the race, it was quick and moving about the equipment. I kept going and after about a minute of this chase I saw it land. I sneaked up on it and just looked in amazement, this is something that happens all the time here with all the monstrous insects, it was the biggest butterfly I have seen ever. it was like a bird, bigger than the warblers , maybe 6 inches wing tip to wingtip and very long also. It looked relaxed so I crept up on it and clasped it with both hands on its wings to stop it flapping and it was really big in the body, fatter than any moth I have seen here and there are some monsters, this was just astonishing. I was shocked and I walked really fast away from the plant as I didn’t want this fantastic insect to get stuck on the screens. I released this thing and watched it zoom away, it was the fastest butterfly I have seen here and these things do happen very frequently here, even the scales that were left on my fingers were huge in comparison to the ones on the smaller butterflies. I wish I had a good book on the butterflies of Peru and also Costa Rica but they don’t exist, and if they did I bet they would be expensive. So that was my day made.
Recent investigations have demonstrated that in Peru there are more than 3,700 species of butterfly, in other words, 20 percent of all the butterflies that exist in the world. Quite astonishing fact.
I walked back from the plant and went to the gym early and just thought about leaving this place once more and would I ever get such creatures ever again. Probably not but at least I would get a beer and a shop.

very similar to the giant one I saw