Environmentalist earns her wings

Eastern Black Swallowtail

Forensic document examiner raises, protects butterflies

Cina Wong is a court-qualified and board-certified forensic document examiner/handwriting expert. An expert for 20 years, she specializes in a number of case types including check fraud, contract disputes, land deeds, anonymous notes, questionable documents and wills.

She holds a bachelor's degree in communications from San Jose University.

Twenty years ago, when Wong discovered the Butterfly Society of Virginia, she learned about the preservation of butterflies. The society helped her further her passion for raising butterflies. She spoke with Inside Business about her Off the Clock hobby and her environmental cause.

Blue iridescent beauties

I raise Eastern Black Swallowtail butterflies that are indigenous to this area. They are quite lovely. The butterflies are known for their unique markings, which are blue, yellow and orange. The blue is iridescent and beautiful. When I was a little girl sitting among my mom's tulip and daffodil garden in California, a butterfly landed on my hand. It stayed on my hand for what seemed like five minutes (a long time in a child's mind). I was amazed to watch her proboscis uncoil and recoil. It also appeared as if she was doing a dance on me and it made me laugh to see that. Now I know that she was taste-testing me. Butterflies have their taste sensors in their feet. Can you imagine tasting your food by standing on it? I didn't make the cut as a flower so she flew away. Ever since that encounter with the beautiful butterfly, I wanted to know more about them and have more of those beautiful winged angels around me.

Raising butterflies

In order to attract the Eastern Black Swallowtail butterfly, you must plant the food they eat. Every February I start hitting the garden centers to get their foods, which are parsley, fennel and dill. The plants can grow easily in your garden. In my garden they start growing around March. You cannot spray them with any pesticides. The butterflies will lay their eggs on the plants. The eggs are very small, no bigger than the tip of a pencil.

Once the eggs hatch, they grow to be these beautiful black caterpillars with little bits of orange and white in the middle of their bodies. Once they get bigger and turn an apple-greenish color, I will bring them in. I then place the caterpillars in a large cookie tin with a mesh screen that will be their home for a while. In the tin I will place organic parsley for them to eat and water.

Over time the caterpillars will go through the chrysalis stage. It can take several weeks or even more before the butterfly emerges. I've done this during the fall, and the butterfly will emerge from the chrysalis after the winter.

Sweet nectar

During the season, anywhere between March and October, I will get about three rounds of butterflies. The numbers can range anywhere from 35 to 100.

In order for them to stay, you have to make it more inviting for them, and that's why I plant marigold. When butterflies are in the caterpillar stage, they have these mouths that allow them to chew their foods. As butterflies they don't have this ability. Instead they have this long tongue called a proboscis that coils and uncoils and allows the butterfly to suck the nectar from plants.

Planting nectar plants like marigold entices the butterflies to stay around longer. I also grow milkweed to bring in Monarch butterflies. They are orange with black lines. The butterflies are born closer to September. During the winter months, they migrate to Mexico, which has butterfly sanctuaries. One of them has a tree that appears to be covered with orange leaves. Instead they are thousands of butterflies.

Protecting the environment

There has been a noticeable decrease in the number of butterflies in the last few years.

Most of this is due to the pesticides that people use in their gardens. These chemicals are dangerous to all insects. People use them to keep other insects from killing the plants in their garden, but it has dangerous consequences for other insects.

I try to do my part as an environmentalist in Hampton Roads by raising butterflies and sending them back into the world to pollinate and reproduce.

Better alternatives for the garden

Healthy alternatives for ridding your garden of pests are ladybugs, which feed on aphids, little white bugs that eat your plants and suck the juice out of them and your plant dies. Some people use praying mantises, which eat crickets, beetles and worms, or Eastern Box Turtles, which eat slugs.

People use pesticides because it's easier than the alternative methods, but they don't realize the negative impact they have on the environment.

I encourage people to raise butterflies because it helps the environment and they're beautiful to look at. nib

Virginia registered Private Investigator. DCJS ID: 99006975