It’s never cold at Deerfield’s Magic Wings Butterfly Conservatory. No matter the chill of winter, it’s always hot and humid inside, a high-latitude rain forest. The conservatory houses creatures that would hardly appear on a bobsled team recruitment roster — butterflies, of course, but also plenty of lizards, insects, and even a gang of small brown birds that rampage around underfoot. If the heating system goes out, a whole crew of folks get alerted: the loss of heat would mean a loss of butterflies.
On Christmas Eve, gray skies and rain brought an air of gloom to the outdoors, but inside the Conservatory, a few families partook of the warmer clime. A couple of Japanese kids stared at an imposing fringed lizard who cocked his head and stared back with a particularly reptilian curiosity. Butterflies — somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,500 to 4,000 — crowded the air all around, nearly landing on anyone who stood still. Near the Conservatory’s central gazebo, Trevor Lemoine, 8, and two-year-old brother Travis crouched near Magic Wings employee Amber Strickland. On her shoulder rode a colorful peach-faced lovebird, a loud and playful creature that didn’t shy away from taking a stroll on Trevor’s finger. The bird then showed off its best move, disappearing inside Strickland’s collar, before popping back out.
Step outside after a saunter around the warm, wing-crowded Conservatory, and the cold out of doors quickly reminds you that you haven’t left New England. But that lovebird? He’s too toasty to care.•
—James Heflin
