Nope, butterflies at the Natural History Museum are not free at all. First off,they're contained in a plexiglas conservatory, and second, cost $16 to get in. Not that this stopped us on Sunday.
This is my second visit to the flying insects; they seemed less varied in color and type this year; still, it's a pleasant trip. Until you start sweating your face off, because the room is about 80 degrees and 80 percent humidity (yes, like a Washington, D.C. July) having the little buggers floating and flapping around is quite lovely.
One piece of advice: On weekends in New York, only do things that no one else has thought of. Which means stay home. Because if you go out to a museum on a three-day-weekend Sunday, things will be packed. We got tickets for a 3:45 visit to the butterflies, then stood in line another 20 minutes to be let in. The room is relatively small, and they can only have a few people in at a time.
Once inside, the kids -- mostly young girls -- will go up to one of the banks of tropical plants and sugar dishes and offer their hands, standing as patiently as they know how for as long as they can stand it, to have one of the butterflies alight on their outstretched fingers. Butterflies have other ideas, though; one monarch landed in the blue-black hair of a young girl while she eagerly awaited anointment in another direction. By the time she was alerted, it had flown away.
On the other hand, should this guy have landed on you, you probably couldn't get away fast enough. Fortunately, he hung like a Garfield window ornament on the plexiglass the entire time, like a bouncer keeping an eye on things. A moth amidst butterflies, yet I bet he gets lots of pictures taken. Made me think of "Silence of the Lambs," frankly.
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