Andrei Aseyev, a resident of Kursk, knows butterflies as professionals do. He is prepared to climb steep cliffs, trudge through the jungle and generally go to the ends of the world for the sake of a rare species.
photo from archive of Andrei Aseyev
Winged Catch
Andrei was five only when he already admired the nature. When he stayed at his grandmother's isolated farmstead in Kharkov region (Ukraine) he would spend all the time in steppes looking for lizards and water snakes. Sometimes he would become so engulfed in his outdoor activities that all neighbours were on their feet to look for him. Sometimes he was found several kilometres away from home. The young naturalist used to receive punishment for such diversions but then he would be completely forgiven – that's a family thing after all.
Avseev the Junior recollects that his passion for butterflies was triggered by his father who once brought home a beautiful moth like one of those he used to catch in the Tajikistan's Pamir mountains. "I thought to myself that it would be nice to scrutinize our brimstone and peacock butterflies. So I decided to catch some. However, the butterfly is not entirely stupid – it will not land on your hands on its own. Then I made an insect net and went ahead... I used to chase butterflies in the potato fields where the North-West residential district is now. There used to be a lot of swallowtails. Poor creatures would just limply land on the ground out of fatigue."
First Aseyev's catches have not been included in the present collection since they were lost. The earliest specimen in the collection that counts over 500 lepidopterans is the Apollo. This butterfly that is listed in the Red Book has been long prized by collectors worldwide. Andrei caught it in the Mount Elbrus area in 1987. Three years after, he returned to mountains in the capacity of a military man. A rifle on his shoulder couldn't prevent him from butterfly watching (and he encountered some very interesting species), but the army regulations kept him from taking an insect net into his hands.
Saving of the Innocent
Andrei never gave up his juvenile hobby for a long time, but he has devoted his entire free time after one occasion on the Black Sea coast in 2002. Once during a summertime walk with his wife they saw a 15-centimetre caterpillar on the road. It was the emperor moth, the largest nocturnal moth in Europe. A "panel of judges" – a gang of kids – gathered around it to discuss how to launch the poor thing into eternity: just to step on it or to think up something innovative.
"We were just in time, I took the caterpillar and delivered them an explanatory lecture," Avseev says smiling. "My heart skipped a beat, that thrill again, as in the childhood. My wife who was benevolently watching all this was still unaware what would come out of it, what a butterfly farm our flat would turn to. My passion received a new push."
When he caught all kinds of butterflies in Kursk region (there are more than one hundred species) and even encountered some unrecorded species, Andrei began to explore new habitats in other regions and countries. He went to the wildest pockets of Vietnam and Cambodia, investigated the plateaus of India and Dominican Republic, climbed the mountain of Bolivia and Peru...
Staggering Moths
It only seems that catching butterflies does not entail any risks. When you roam through the jungle alone in the night you don't think so at all. You sit in the "ambush" with a stretched screen and a lamp on to lure the winged beauties. You wait and think: you are a hunter or, perhaps, a prey? The running generator masks the night rustles.
Many butterflies live in extremely remote places. For example, to catch a loxias, one will have to go to Kirghizia and look for it in the Kaindy River basin. These species fly along hanging cliffs because their favourite food birthwort grows among rocks. In this case, the butterfly hunt becomes a dangerous adventure, for which mountaineering equipment is just right.
The loxias does not compare to some other representatives of lepidoptera species that can be easily lured by sweets or, on the contrary, by something not tasty like rotten fruit. Such butterflies have another sin – they have a weakness for... booze. Once I and my friends had a picnic out of the town. We made hot wine punch on fire," Aseyev recollects. "As soon as I put the cup on the ground, an Araschnia butterfly landed on it to sip from a drop of wine. I said: "Fly!" So I was trying to drive it away. But it waved its wings towards the table, its legs here and there... I don't know if they have a hangover, but impaired coordination was evident."
Costa-Rica at Home
To catch a butterfly is half the way. An attempt to take butterflies from a foreign country can be rife with consequences, to the extent of criminal prosecution, especially if it is a Red Book species. However, the attitude to this is not the same in different countries. The government racket works in some places, it doesn't in others. "The situation with butterfly hunting in such former Soviet republics as Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan is not favourable," Andrei says "You wouldn't want climbing Afghani mountains and return with nothing on your hands, therefore I applied for permits to catch certain species. Another option I used was cooperation with research institutions."
To keep live tropical butterflies at home, Aseyev creates required lighting, temperature and humidity conditions. He finds substitution plants for their nutrition. He has also an insectarium, a place where chrysalises are reared: they are hanging in a cage over the bath. By opening hot water tap he creates Costa-Rica conditions. Subtle creatures fly all over the place.
There are some issues, of course. "A few years ago, my mate from Brest in Belarus, who is also a butterfly farmer, had a situation," Andrei narrates. "He had emperor moths (We mentioned the size of their caterpillars above). So, they escaped the cage... Such things happen quite often. Then you go looking for them all over the place. Sometimes you cannot find all. So, my Belarus friend came home to find a chrysalis on curtains. Mind you, that it is unreal to disrupt it by hands; it is even difficult to cut it. But the curtains were strong – he managed to detach the chrysalis. But the real fun kicked in when in the winter his mother-in-law took out a mink fur coat from a wardrobe. She found a spun cocoon on the back. It could be only cut out. He had to buy a new fur coat for her!"
