Happily Chasing the Blues  In the Florida Keys, a family
connects with nature while searching for a tiny butterfly in its
sole remaining habitat  06-06-2009 // Lindsey Truitt  Miami blue
butterfly  IT HAD SEEMED a lovely idea: to sit beneath graceful
palms on a tiny island and feel the presence of the endangered
Miami blue butterfly, “one of the rarest living things on
Earth,” according to one news report. As few as eight adults
were then found in the insects’ sole known colony, on Bahia
Honda in the Florida Keys, where I happened to be camping with
my three kids in 2003.  “You want us to think about this
practically nonexistent butterfly?” asked my 10-year-old son,
Max. I doubted it would be possible to actually see one—a nearly
extinct miniature butterfly on a small chunk of sand-covered
limestone 30 miles off the Florida mainland. But just to know it
was there, even unseen, would be a reminder of our own fleeting
presence on this planet. To be in the vicinity of such a rare
creature helped solidify my appr