It takes a steady hand to become an expert seamstress, but an even steadier hand if the fabrics you're joining together are actually delicate monarch butterfly wings.
But that's what costume designer Romy McCloskey did. Lucky for us, she documented the entire experience on Facebook.
McCloskey explains that the butterfly is only three days old, and was born with the wing defect you see in the photo below.
She used a clothes hanger to secure the butterfly before she cut away the damaged wing. "Don't worry," she writes, "it doesn't hurt. It's like trimming hair or nails."
She collected the butterfly's new wing from another butterfly who had died previously.
A little bit of contact cement later, and voila! Installation complete. McCloskey explains that the white smudges you see on the right wing are just talc powder, which she used to make sure any stray glue didn't cause both wings to stick together.
Surgery was over; but the real question remained: Could he fly?
The answer is yes.
"We had a successful flight! A quick spin around the backyard, then a little rest on on [sic] of the bushes... then ... off he flew! My heart soared with him, for sure," McCloskey said.
Her story has since gone viral, gaining the attention of The Washington post, Newsweek, Buzzfeed, TheDodo and plenty of others. A successful wing transplant on a monarch butterfly ... now that's something you don't see every day.
