Take your camera to Butterfly World

COCONUT CREEK, Fla. — Ileana Garica of South Florida has just entered the Tropical Rainforest exhibit at Butterfly World. She raises her camera and prepares to shoot.

She has a magnificent butterfly, an iridescent blue morpho, framed in her viewfinder. Moving closer, Ileana clicks the shutter. It's one of many pictures she will take today in Butterfly World, the largest butterfly park in the world, home to more than 4,000 butterflies at any given time.

Ileana is not a professional photographer. She is 6 years old and is using a one-time-use camera. Her mom, Tracy, has taken her to Butterfly World to experience the magical metamorphosis of one of the world's most beautiful and amazing creatures, an animal that, after hatching from an egg, begins life as a crawling herbivore with many legs, changes its appearance as a caterpillar five or six times, weaves a cocoon, and emerges as a flying animal that smells with its legs, has four wings and eats sweet pollen.

Ileana is one of many photographers who capture the beauty of butterflies at Butterfly World with their cameras. Photo enthusiast Cesar Rivera, also from South Florida, brings his professional digital camera several times a year to Butterfly World to photograph as many species as he can, which number approximately 150.

On this day, Cesar is documenting the life cycle of the butterfly, from egg to mature animal, all of which can be experienced and photographed at Butterfly World. During his photo session, Cesar snapped a shot of me just moments after a white morpho butterfly landed on my camera. A rare shot indeed!

Butterfly World, which celebrates its 15th anniversary in 2003, is the creation of founder Ron Boender. It's a hobby gone wild, he readily admits. Butterflies are the good guys of the bug world, Boender says. They don't cause diseases, and they don't hurt anyone. Butterflies are mystical and magical creatures and conjure up all types of feelings in children of all ages. Perhaps more important, butterflies make people smile.

Butterfly World, which covers almost three acres, is divided into several sections, giving visitors insight into the life cycle of a butterfly.

In the Laboratory, visitors can see dozens of cocoons of soon-to-be butterflies, as well as butterflies emerging from cocoons. It's in the lab where butterfly experts raise and study caterpillars and moths.