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A woman has taken to TikTok with a heartwarming clip that shows her ‘fix’ an injured butterfly’s broken wing with a feather.
In the video that has received over 400k views, Dahlia (@flosferox) wrote: ‘I didn’t have access to a spare butterfly wing, so I made one with a feather and glued it on.’
@flosferox his full name is Nemo-Bucky the Bionic Butterfly #butterflyrescue #prosthetic #bionicbutterfly
She showcased the butterfly, who she named Nemo-Bucky the Bionic Butterfly, from different angles as he appeared to flap his wings.
‘He can fly a little bit, but not very far’, she wrote. ‘Still, it’s better than not at all.’
Dahlia had to improvise with a craft store feather @flosferox/TikTok
Dahlia found the monarch butterfly with the injured wing on June 20 and has since aided Nemo-Bucky to recovery. She shared the journey with her six thousand followers, trialling different methods in an attempt to make him stronger.
She told The Dodo, “Day by day, more and more of his wing was breaking off, so I knew I had to improvise fast”, which prompted her to head to a craft store to buy a similar-sized feather to his other functioning wing.
In response to how she attached the wing, the TikToker said she had ‘carefully researched how rescuers do it with contact cement and another butterfly wing.’
Dahlia remained optimistic despite the wing’s condition getting worse.
In one of her follow-up videos with 1.2 million views, she emotionally explained, ‘Two weeks ago, I rescued him, gave him a new wing and encouraged him to fly.’
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‘He grew stronger and stronger as he learned to work with his new wing...
@flosferox Thank you for following his journey! I plan on raising more monarchs in his honor #butterflyrescue #bionicbutterfly #monarchbutterfly
‘He flew up, up, higher and higher. Sat in a tree a while as if to say “thank you” and then flew away...
The butterfly has been set free with his new wing @flosferox/TikTok
‘I never thought it would be possible that he could be released, but he did it! He never gave up and now he is out there flying free.’
Hundreds of fellow TikTokers flurried to the video in awe of Dahlia’s work. “This made me cry. Thank you for keeping me going”, one commented, while others thanked the woman for restoring their faith in humanity.
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