A Pleasantly Welcome Uninvited Guest

This morning my husband hollered down the stairs to me that there was a moth... or a butterfly in the kitchen. I meant to go up and see, since I am pretty good at distinguishing a moth from a butterfly and was rather curious as to what he found. I was sure it was probably some moth. Then, I got sidetracked and forgot about our guest completely. After some sleep, I went upstairs to find something to eat, and I heard wings frantically flapping behind the kitchen curtains. I pulled back the curtains to see a Painted Lady butterfly. What a nice surprise that was! So, of course, I went downstairs again and grabbed my camera. The lighting wasn't the best, but I did what I could. LOL

At one point I was able to get the butterfly on my finger, and it seemed to calm down for a few minutes, but then I realized that I couldn't click the shutter with a butterfly on my right hand, so I carefully place my Painted Lady friend back in the windowsill. It resumed it's furious attempts to fly out the window into the great outdoors. I took a few more photos and had Ed come up and act as a butterfly perch for a short while.

After the photo session, I took the butterfly to the front door, and was going to open the door and release it. The butterfly got into a bit of a hurry and landed on the ground. Mollie the dog, thought it looked like a treat, and I had to rescue it in a hurry. Finally the butterfly was set free and I watched it sail up, and out, past the telephone wires into it's next adventure.

Anyway, a few of the phots, mostly unedited (one was cropped slightly) since my hard drive (and therefore "scratch disks") are all full.