Danger

“Be safe Danger!” we called up at the tiny moth on the wire by the tree.

The tiny, ragged edged, fuzzy moth kept flitting dangerously close around the pool. The first time we saw her, she landed on the drawing of a branch and leaf on an inflatable. Carefully, I lifted the entire floatee up and out of the pool, gingerly setting it in the grass, away from the water. She returned the favor by landing on my head, like a bow. “There’s a moth on your head, there’s a moth on your head, there’s a moth on your head,” my daughter repeated until there wasn’t.

She circled the patio, soaring up over the roof, around the six-feet tall 4 o’clocks in wild full bloom, to finally land on the wire that stretched from the fence to the house. That was when we named her Danger. She repeated that pattern, circling, then landing on either the wire or the tip of the tree several times, until she decided we were interesting again. This time she landed on my daughter’s head, until she was lured to her hand by a bright pink ball. We could see her long tongue extended to probe the ball in hand, while we studied her big wondering eyes and fuzzy body and antennae.

For as long as she was around, we kept tabs on her. Wishing her safe, as she flitted to and fro. The world is so big and hostile for such a tiny thing with delicate small wings. I’ve cleaned enough dead insects and moths from the pool to know how tempting and yet deadly this situation could be. We were her islands, her refuge on the water, when she rested thoughtfully on our heads. We imagined how tired she was after each lap around the patio, how good it felt for her to rest.

In the meantime, we watched the hawks high above, twirling and diving, performing stratopheric acrobatics, counting three, then five, no eight hawks wheeling. They did not notice our little moth, nor care when she finally left us. “What’s the opposite of danger?” my daughter asked. “Safe or home.” I replied. “Then her name is Safe now.”