The male Julia Butterfly, on top in these two photos, has a large piece of his left wing missing.

A few hours after I took the photos of the pair of Julia Butterflies, I saw this male puddling. I rushed to photograph him and noticed on the way that his wing was torn just like the male in the pair I'd photographed.

I was so distracted by catching him puddling and figuring out that he was the same butterfly that I didn't pay attention to where I stood:

For those of you unfamiliar with this evil mound of sandy dirt that my foot was in; it's a fire ant mound. Unfortunately, I was wearing sandals.

Fire ants, when disturbed, scramble out to cover what bugs them. Then, all at once, they begin to sting. OW OW OW!!!!

I leapt away, kicked my sandal across the field while hollering and smacking the ants off my foot and ankle, and squashing the stinging ants off of me. Somehow after all that ruckus, the Julia was still puddling and I did get a few photos. I was hurting and itching and all wound up, which resulted in rather fuzzy photos. Shortly thereafter I gave up pictures for the day and went home to scratch at my ant bites.

I'll wrap this page up with the photo on the left. I try to keep my images 560 pixels or shorter so they display well for most folks, but I just couldn't leave this one that way. Scroll on down for a larger version of it. I love the way the sunlight shines through the butterfly wings illuminating the markings on their upper surface too: