Country diary: a peacock butterfly wakes into living room summer

Sandy, Bedfordshire: It should have been hibernating, but there it was, bashing its head against a cold window. Something had to be done

It is a curious fact that the most beautiful parts of a butterfly are also the least palatable. When I lifted a log from the woodpile, the eye of a peacock in an insect wing beneath looked back. It was a sail without a ship, a cover without a book. The wing was still fired with fresh colours, as lustrous as a birthday balloon and just as nutritious. The thick body that had been provisioned with sweetness to sit out the winter in darkness had gone.

The day before, another peacock, inadvertently transported indoors in the log basket, was hours away from cremation when it woke into living room summer. I did not see it fly up to the sunlit window but heard a loud thrumming from behind the blind. There it was, improbably animated out of season, bashing its head incessantly against a cold window. How could it understand that the golden orb beyond was a false god, offering only frost and ice?