Tiger moth...

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Here’s a moth I found in the garden in Wales at the weekend. It’s a Garden Tiger, isn’t it striking, so perfectly symmetrical.

I like moths, there’s something about them that makes them just that tiny bit more interesting than butterflies. I’m not saying that I don’t like butterflies, I do, but moths are a little more mysterious, slightly more threatening and somehow edgier.

Moths are creatures of the moon.

As child in Oxfordshire I used to catch Tiger Moths all the time, once I even caught a rare Emperor Moth in the old willow tree by the cottages. I would set my torch on the ground, pick up my well-used cane fishing net bought for sixpence and Mrs Rileys, and wait for the moths to arrive. I would keep them in my jar for an hour or two, watching them frantically flutter, and then let them go. Sometimes I would find moth chrysalis hanging in the dark corners at the back of the tool shed and these would also go into my jar, suspended on a piece of privet, until the moth unfolded itself and emerged all new, to be freed to fly away.

Much later my parents moved and went to live in the centre of Exmouth in Devon. They had a second floor flat in a big Georgian house with large gardens, not far from the church. I can still hear the chime on the hour and the smaller chime on the half, floating on the crisp, sharp air, on a late summer evening.

When Holly was a baby Gaynor and I would often visit for a week or so, using their flat as a base to explore Devon, visiting the nearby villages, or going further afield to Salcombe or up onto Exmoor. I think they were happy in Devon and I’ve never really understood why they upped and moved, without warning, to Anglesey one day.

One night when we were staying at their flat, reached by the wide red painted concrete steps, a planter full of bedding flowers on each step, I couldn’t sleep. I watched television for a while, but as the night became the early hours I got bored and went into the flat’s small galley kitchen to find myself a drink. Turning on the light I noticed a small white moth fly in through the open window and start to flutter around the buzzing neon light, then another, and another – soon there were seven or eight moths of different sizes and colours dancing along the tube. They looked so delicate, all lit up by the blue-white light, their feathery feelers quivering as their downy bodies battered against the glass. They were going to hurt themselves. I reached into the cupboard, took out a pint glass, turned it upside-down on the counter, and began to collect the moths.

After three hours I had four upturned beer glasses each with about twenty moths fluttering away inside – striped yellow and black moths, emerald green, pale grey, brown, black spotted magpie moths, white ghosts, pastel blues, moths of all sizes and shapes fluttering and spinning against the glass still trying to make their way up to the light above.

I read up on moths after my moth hunt. The reason moths circle the light isn’t because they are attracted to it. Moths are creatures of the moon, and they use it to help them navigate in the dark. When they get too close to a light, the moth does what nature tells it to do - it keeps its body aligned in relation to the light source, so if the light source were the distant moon, the moth would fly straight. After all, the moon is a long way away - but my Mum’s fluorescent tube wasn’t the moon and since the light was so close, my moths ended up flying in circles making them easy for me to catch.

I must have caught at least seventy moths, maybe as many as a hundred, in about four hours. The sun was coming up when I set them free, watching them drunkenly flutter away through the open kitchen window into the cool, morning air to wherever moths flutter away to in the daytime.

I went to bed happy. I don’t know why. Perhaps I felt like a boy again, a boy with a jam jar and a Tiger Moth.

I must go moth catching again… maybe - just maybe, I’ll catch the boy once more as well.