The Birth of Butterflys

 Once upon a time when dragons were numerous upon the earth and humans weren’t dragons were very happy. The beautiful sky and the land belonged to them or at least they thought it did. Under the marvelous conditions that existed then two kinds of dragons evolved.

 There were the huge dragons that were bigger than elephants and the little dragons that were as small or smaller than birds. The two groups probably came from some common ancestor by that mysterious process called Evolution but Darwin didn’t exist yet and DNA was far in the future so we will never know that for sure.

What we do know is that most of the large dragons were green and not a pretty green either but there were a few red and some gold ones as well. Once every fifty years or so a white dragon was born.

The little dragons, on the other hand came in a huge variety of colors. Some were even  multicolored. They were beautiful to look at and to see a craft of them flying together was an astounding sight.

The large dragons laid large eggs, usually in a secret cave. There the young hatched and soon learned to follow the mother dragon.

The little dragons spun a bag into which the eggs were laid and it was then attached by sticky spit to a tree or the side of a rock ledge. The baby dragons were on their own when they hatched.

The big dragons were divided between the plant eaters and the animal eaters though some did both. A big dragon could swallow a cow in one gulp and easily shred a person for lunch.

The little dragons feasted on bugs, and sometimes snakes. The one’s that could spit fire sometimes roasted scorpions which were considered a real treat.

For both groups centuries went by and everything was wonderful. Then a horrible thing happened mankind began to advance. What man called civilization began to spread. For some of the big dragons this meant a new food supply. They could just fly down into a village and help themselves.

What the dragons didn’t understand, at least in the beginning, was that mankind would not just lie down an be eaten. Instead mankind developed weapons, swords and spears. Mankind began to hunt dragons. Now humans were not much good at telling the difference between good and bad. They found it easier to lump all creatures that looked alike into one group. In this case all dragons were