Meet the butterfly woman - Yahoo! India News

Meet the butterfly woman - Yahoo! India News: "Meet the butterfly woman

Wed, Mar 12 01:10 AM

Jamshedpur: When the tourists arrive at Butterfly Park in Jamshedpur to take a close look at the hundreds of the winged wonders flitting across flowers in their cages, they more often than not come across a spindly woman moving diligently in the enclosures checking out the foliage there. She checks the leaves and the flowers, collects a few samples and then moves on.

Meet Malti Majhi - the tribal woman who shoulders the responsibility of breeding butterflies for the Tata zoo. A dedicated worker, Malti devotes her time wholeheartedly for the breeding of the winged creatures.

She collects eggs found on the leaves of the vegetation in the park and transfers them to small baskets at a larvae-breeding chamber. When the larvae grow into pupae, she shifts them to the butterfly breeding house.

It is her responsibility to see that the creepy larvae take the right food at the breeding house. For this, she arranges for over a dozen species of green plants.

She also prepares a mixture of honey and water in the right proportion for the butterflies to feed on. The cycle of breeding eggs to putting butterflies for exhibition has to go on without a break.

And she does it with a smile on her face. The Tata zoo management has even"