Butterflies

The butterfly population is diminishing rapidly I read. I have never heard of most of the types mentioned and certainly I've never seen the gaudier ones. The only butterflies I remember seeing as a child were the Red Admiral and the Gabbage White.
The Cabbage White, as any vegetable gardener will know, lays eggs on cabbage leaves - on the underside of the leaves so that the unsuspecting amateur gardener and predators won't immediately see them. Turn over the leaf and there they are, the blighters, either small yellowish eggs or small, writhing caterpillars getting ready for the big feast - of your cabbages.
When I was a kid the word got about that, due to there being a superfluity of Cabbage White butterflies, the local council would pay a certain number of pence for every ten butterflies caught, killed and delivered to the council offices.
I never found out if this was some kind of joke, or a rumour that took off, or if it was an actual official project, but what happened was that every kid I knew was out and about catching and killing white butterflies and putting them in containers ready to take them to the council office at the time specified: a certain Saturday morning.
I caught and killed a few, then gave up, forgetting about it.
Until I heard what had happened that Saturday morning.
A group of about thirty kids turned up at the council office to collect the money in exchange for the butterlies they had killed and had with them.
However, they found that the door of the council office was closed and that, banging on it, brought no one to open it and attend to them.
One of my friends told me what they did next in their anger at being duped this way.
"We stuffed our butterflies through the letter box," he said. "Every one of them. Must have been hundreds," he laughed.
I have often wondered about the reaction of the first person to open the door of the council office the following Monday morning as he waded, possibly knee deep, in dead Cabbage White butterflies.