The police explained to the little girl that her father was killed by a freak swarm of rare, poison-winged butterflies; one hundred and four of them caught, counted, and mounted less than two hours after his death was reported. The hero was a two-fisted entomologist and the villain cruel Mother Nature. The girl was raised by a pair of maiden aunts who tutored her in their crumbling mansion until she left—inspired by the entomologist, she went in pursuit of a lost city of intelligent fire ants last seen in Brazil. One of the aunts died from Malaria and the other from despair. The girl made all the scientific journals and taught at Harvard for several years—her further adventures popularized in a series of novels written by a distant cousin she'd met in passing one summer night, at her aunts' mansion. There had been a party, and he'd been too forward. She'd slapped him and they never spoke again. The royalty cheques were always returned to his publisher, unopened.