- Mornings as boy, Vladimir would wake up to a slight "chink" in the shutters: if light came through, he would rise happily. If not, it was better to keep those shutters shut.
- By the age seven, Vladimir learns to equate beautiful, light-filled days with good chances to hunt butterflies.
- The first time he notices a butterfly—like really notices one—is when he is sitting on a bench by the front door, and sees a Swallowtail butterfly, and Ustin the janitor catches it for him. Mademoiselle traps it in Vladimir's cap with some naphthalene (the stuff they use for moth balls) and expects to expire overnight. Vladimir will have the beginning of his own collection!
- Instead, it flies away in the morning, and Vladimir loses it...but not forever.
- He goes on looking for a similar specimen all of his life, until it is "finally overtaken and captured, after a forty-year race, on an immigrant dandelion under an endemic aspen near Boulder." (6.1.3)
- Soon after Vladimir finds a moth and his mother kills it with ether.
- After that, ether reminds him of moths and his mother, even when it is used as an anesthetic for his own appendectomy.