A flitting obsession - The Butterfly Man reveals his passion

By Silvia Casabianca - 08/10/2005

A butterfly was struggling to get out of its cocoon. Had it been helped, it could not have flown. It's the struggle of pulling out of the cocoon that gives the butterfly's wings the strength to fly. It's nature teaching a lesson about patience and struggle and endurance.

Five different butterflies are tattooed on Mike Malloy's arm: a Monarch, which is Florida's official butterfly, a Tiger Swalowtail, Bird Wing, Viceroy and Miami Blue.

In what he calls his butterfly nursery, in a corner of his home's garage, different species of caterpillars are kept in styrofoam boxes with screen lids until they complete their seven to 10 day process of transformation, and are released into the garden that borders one of the lakes at King's Lake. His property, visited by around 20 different kind of butterflies, is recognized by the National Wildlife Federation as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat Site.

"If the garden offers everything they need, the butterflies stay," he explains. And Malloy has been a gardener for 41 years. He knows exactly which host plants are good for butterflies to lay eggs and which nectar plants attract which butterflies.

Malloy breeds only a few species. "A butterfly lays around 1,000 eggs in their lifetime but only two to five percent make it to adulthood due to predators." The most dangerous predator is man, followed by birds, wasps, geckos and frogs. Caterpillars bred at Malloy's nursery have of 95 percent chances of survival.

Caterpillars are fed special plants. Some of their chrysalides are transplanted to a special box that makes a trip every Thursday to Caribbean Gardens. This gives visitors and staff the opportunity to observe the last stage of the splendid metamorphosis. The newly born butterflies are released into the zoo's butterfly garden.

Malloy and his wife Jackie, live in a colorful land of nectar, flowers, caterpillars, chrysalides and wings. If in the backyard, butterflies roam from flower to flower, inside the house butterflies also wing. But this time a static dance, inside acrylic boxes that hang on each wall, from the vestibule to the living, the dining room and the halls.

In his home workshop, Malloy's enormous gardener hands hold with extreme care the delicate insects that have been shipped to him from different corners of the Earth. Some of his artistic arrangements are displayed at the main lobby of the Naples Community Hospital in downtown Naples.

Many of the insects come from farms dedicated to breeding butterflies around the world. Malloy emphasizes that the butterflies he uses in his art haven't been killed or captured. After the butterfly ends its short life (most of them, five to seven days) it's picked up and wrapped in paper.

When Malloy receives the butterfly, he rehydrates it in a special solution overnight. The next day it's pliable enough to work with it. He spreads the wings to the position he prefers, pins them and let them dehydrate back to a stiff form. Then he arranges the butterflies in an acrylic box.

"The hardest thing is trying to match them color-wise," Malloy said. "These are not like museum pieces, I make arrangements that give the impression of a natural flight, they are three-dimensional."

Malloy's garden has no lawn and he doesn't use any chemicals, fertilizers or pesticides. His house and garden are environmentally friendly.

"The best thing to do in Florida is to have no lawn. It's expensive and hard to keep," he said. "And it doesn't look any different from my neighbors. If people would let nature run its course, they will have butterflies. The best pest control is nature itself.

"We have ruined the earth so much, I don't think there is a way to go back. But we can try to do a little better. Perhaps our kids will see some of the things that I see. Man is the worst predator of the Earth. We sometimes don't think that pesticides we use in our gardens go to the water we drink," he said.

"He is a man that has 110 percent involvement in what he does," Jackie said. "I manage his life, he is not detail-oriented. I am at the business end. I package and box (the art), do the billing, the phone calls." And Jackie is a make up specialist.

Malloy is still landscaping and he does butterfly gardens for other people. His Web site is www.naplesbutterfly.com.

©Naples Sun Times 2006, http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15009311&BRD=2605&PAG=461&dept_id=523946&rfi=6