"I let them go," she says with a shrug. Her mother had asked her whether she wanted to keep them and pin them to a board, like a real butterfly collector, and even offered to buy her a case to keep them in, but as a child she hadn't been able to kill even a butterfly.

Alex found a huge blue caterpillar inching its way up a tree, and put her hand flat against the trunk so the caterpillar would crawl onto her palm, then holds it up so Kyle can see it. "Thanks for bringing me here. This is really neat."