I live in a high-rise condo, well above the ground. Back on 2023-01-30, we found a butterfly fluttering against our patio doors, apparently trying to get out. We didn't want to let it out, because it was cold enough a butterfly would freeze in minutes, and probably not very many minutes.
So I got a jar and a piece of cardboard and captured it. It appears to be a clouded sulphur butterfly, one of the commonest sorts, but very much not at a sensible time of year. We have no idea how it ended up in our place. I assume it came in as an egg or caterpillar on something else we brought in, and then mistook "warm" for "right time of year to emerge".
We've been keeping it in an old cashew jar (probably something between 1 and 2 litres in volume) with a piece of window screen on the top (to keep it in while not restricting airflow). We haven't let it fly around the place because there are way too many hazards in here for a butterfly.
After some research, including contacting someone at a local live-butterfly exhibit, we've been keeping it supplied with orange and apple slices and smushed-up banana, plain water, and water with some honey in it.
We've been calling it Chester, because that was the name that popped into my wife's mind when she thought of the question. We're trying to give the poor little critter as much quality-of-life as we can, but there's only so much we can do. Nobody seems to have live flowers of the sorts it would normally feed on at this time of year (not surprising, but we felt we kinda had to look into it). And we don't have a proper enclosure, so we've been making do with the jar and hoping the confinement doesn't weigh too heavily on it. (I'm not sure to what extent butterflies have enough of a mind for those concepts to even be applicable, but I figure better to err on the side of taking good care of it.)
We don't know when it emerged, but it probably was shortly before we noticed it, so we're counting its birthday as 01-30, when we found it. That means today marks day 22.
Chester seems to be aging. He (we've been using masculine pronouns based on the name Chester) has been having trouble climbing the walls of the jar recently, and today I saw him falling over while trying to walk. I suspect he won't live much longer. But he's already closing in on the longest life on record for such butterflies; one page we found says 4-7 days, but with some specimens known to live as long as 24 days.
One of the first things I did was to contact it, in trance, and ask whether it were a messenger (I've heard it said that butterflies are often messengers from Spirit). It said no. I then asked why it had come into our lives. It said, no particular reason. This puzzles me; I can't help feeling that something this unusual has to have some kind of reason for being here.
I feel quite fond of the little critter. I will be sad when he finally dies.