The Lady Butterfly
In 1854 Dr. Edward Avery III became obsessed with butterflies. Obsessed was not really the right word, but his actions would eventually show us how he felt. His love was not only an outside fascination of the insect. He could just sit in the garden and watch them fly about for hours at a time, but his mind would wander to bigger and better butterflies. That is when he took his addiction to the inside where he can do the work that was really important to him.
He quit his job as a professor midway through the fall semester in 1854, leaving in the middle of one of his teachings. It was time for him to dedicate all of his time to butterflies. But he had a secret. The bigger and better butterfly he wanted to make was a human butterfly.
For decades Dr. Avery III worked in his underground lab located in his home close to The River Thames. He began by taking the DNA from a butterfly and "feeding" it to the human DNA. That was the way he explained it in his diary. It was a process that was not even thought of yet. He was the first to try, and we don't really know how he did it. We do know that he failed miserably many times, never really getting the human DNA to grab that of the butterfly's.
Eventually in February of 1876, the human DNA ate the DNA of the butterfly.
I can only imagine the excitement he must have felt each and every time his butterfly would be ready to emerge, and then the disappointment to see that things have gone wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.
We do not have a lot of documentation about his process at this point, just a few sketches of what would emerge. We never will know what was completely going on in the mind of the doctor because there was an explosion in his underground lab on November 17th, 1877.
The explosion must have killed Dr. Edward Avery III instantly. When the authorities arrived at his home, the entire lab was destroyed along with all of his documentation. The only thing that remained was a large chrysalis containing an unidentified object and a half burned diary of his findings.
Three days later, Lady Butterfly emerged. Never meeting her maker.
It is said that Lady Butterfly would flap her wings trying to fly away, but the weight of her body was too great. She was then kept indoors and refused to eat any food that was given to her. When anyone approached she would become full of rage and dangerous to be around, wounding many people.
She lived only four days.
No recreations of her have been successful.