Ever Caught A Butterfly with Your Bare Hands?

Have you ever caught a butterfly with just your hands?

I did today and not just one but two of those Pieris rapae or the small cabbage white.
I have no idea how they got in there but the only reason I could think of was - they maybe were doing their courtship flight and accidentally went in the strawberry greenhouse.

It's been scorching hot for days and the strawberry leaves were wilted so I gave them all a drink. That's when I saw those two flying in panic ... back and forth the top of the greenhouse. I've rescued other flying insect from in there several times - bees, bumblebees, mason bees and several butterflies. I think most flying insect gets trapped in there because they have a tendency to keep flying upward so they never found the way out. A few have managed to find the door but these two cabbage butterflies were really flying frantic so I had to help.

I noticed that the male nips on a strawberry flower next to the baby celery plant every now and then so I waited for him to do so.

Of course, I took a pic of him doing that first.

Then, I used my fingers to hold his fragile wings. Butterflies are too soft and you have to be very gentle otherwise you'll get them smashed with just your fingers. I had to clip his wings between my fingers otherwise he'd flap it and I could get wing dusts on my eyes. A great lot of butterfly's wings dust could actually temporarily blind you.

I let him go and off he went high in the sky.

Then I went back for the female and found out I was too late. She already got trapped on the spider web in one of the 4 corners of the greenhouse and her left hind wing was already torn.

It was easy picking her out of the spiderweb which I soon destroyed and had the huge spider thrown in one of the conifers across from the greenhouse. She - on the other hand just played dead.

Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you.

Curious, I checked and carefully removed the rest of the web on her wings. Then I took pics of that lil' gal.

She just stared at me ...

Worried it's stressing her out already, I took her out of the greenhouse, and opened my fingers to release her. She didn't budge. Instead, she just sat there for more than 20 seconds. Yes, I counted 1 to 20 but she was still there.
I froze and turned my camera on again and managed to take this shot.

A few seconds more, her suitor appeared from the other side of the fence and finally she took off. Before that... I was thinking of putting her in a glass container in case she wouldn't budge... but off she flapped her wings, torn left hind wing and all and they both proceeded with the courtship dance.

And I thought to myself ..

hmmm.. perhaps they thought they got themselves a room ...

I took all these pictures with my Samsung Galaxy A3 2016 edition.