On Sunday, while shopping at Walgreens, I came across a Spring Garden Endcap of poly resin gnomes, silk flowers, animal shaped planters, and the like.  The display also included this little gem called My Butterfly.

I stood there and played with it for all of 5 minutes, amazed that someone actually thought up this thing and is now attempting to sell it at Walgreens for $12.99.  It’s a canning jar with a fake butterfly on the inside on a tiny string.  You tap the lid and the little butterfly actually flaps its wings and bounces around on the inside of the jar, just like a real butterfly back in the day.

I snapped several photos of it with my cell phone, eager to post this on my blog, but I knew my photos wouldn’t do it justice.  No worries!  Amazon.com is selling it for $19.00 and had a better photo!  Also notice the thing as all 5 star reviews!  So people are actually buying this!

Back in the day, I remember my sister having to make a bug collection for Science glass.  We collected various bugs from the yard, including one of those large red fire ants, in Ball jars.  We popped in a cotton ball soaked in rubbing alcohol ala mafia style and had a bug corpse in no time which we adhered to a block of Styrofoam in a shadow box using a push pin. By the time I had reached that Science class, we were doing leaf collections.

These days I’m just happy to see a butterfly in the yard, and would rather snap a photo of it than catch it and put it in a jar although I did my fair share of this as a kid.  Frogs, slugs, and fireflies all found temporary homes in my mom’s canning jars or a small instant coffee container when I was growing up.

And now this lovely little over priced contraption to remind us how cruel we were as children.

So, I bought one to put right next to my pet rock.

NOT!