n o s i h c it A a h t Mar
This book was written and illustrated by
All rights reserved
Martha Aitchison
The Butterfly Effect An ecofable An revised Version of this book with larger illustrations, a section on the animals in the story and a simple explanation of Chaos Theory is available from
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Once upon a time there was a Jaguar having his siesta in the deep Amazonian jungle. A Butterfly was butterflying around looking for a drink. Being rather shortsighted and too vain to wear glasses, she mistook the spotted skin of the Jaguar for a patch of wild flowers and went to investigate. The Jaguar, disturbed in his sleep, swatted the insect,which was sent spinning, wildly beating her bright blue wings .The slight movement of air they created was enough to dislodge a Hibiscus Flower which, having completed
its one day life cycle, was ready to fall. As it dropped, it trapped a Soldier Ant who at that precise moment was rushing along on the jungle floor, already very late for a military parade. The Ant took some time to free himself which made him quite short tempered, so he bit furiously on the next thing he saw: the tail of an Amazonian Lizard that was sunbathing peacefully. The sting made the Lizard run for shelter, her exit a sudden multicolour flash
on the sun baked stones. surprised, she dived into a swamp and, incidentally, into the jaws of a Green Anaconda snake that was submerged there. His appetite thus quite satisfied, the Anaconda thought appropriate to have a little rest. He slowly climbed out of the water and onto a nearby mahogany sapling that grew at the edge of the jungle where the cleared lands for cattle ranching started. He just settled in the fork of two branches when a Cow came to scratch
her flank on the trunk of the young tree, shaking the Anaconda down from his perch causing him to hit the ground with a loud PLOP! The terrified Cow ran back to her mates and the entire herd stampeded. In the intense heat the sweat from the cattle quickly evaporated to form a tiny Cloud of a rather mischievous nature who had nothing better to do than to tickle mercilessly the stomach of a Low Pressure System high in the sky who was travelling west over the Amazon.
This really annoyed him and he roared and he puffed all along its journey over land and sea so by when it reached the coast of China he had turned into a most frightful typhoon. Now it happened that somewhere in that country a Wise Old Man was sitting out of doors, meditating on the nature of Nothing and Everything, when the first gusts of the approaching storm shook the blossoms off the cherry trees covering the garden with pink snow.
Noticing the disturbance the Wise Old Man, seemingly talking to a pink petal that had landed on the tip of his long beard, said quietly under his breath:
And with that he went inside his cozy warm house to brew a cup of tea.
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