Remember that Hookah-Smokin' Caterpillar that my husband found in the blueberry patch up the hill? Well, he's been eating his way through what we have left of a couple of blueberry bushes here in our yard, and we were starting to wonder what we were going to do if we ran out of blueberry leavs.
Then yesterday, I was on the phone with my brother Mark wishing him a happy birthday when I looked up at Spiky's condominium and realized he was laying silk in the grid of the hardware cloth. (By the way, the reason Spiky's in a metal cage is that we found out that his greatest predators are parasitic wasps and mice. We've protected him from the wasps but we needed something metal to keep out the d@#$%^?*d mice.)
All evening, the three of us took turns standing close by and watching the start of this amazing transformation. Moths and butterflies have long been considered magical creatures because their altered states are so visible to us, living metaphors of change. Years ago, I had the privilege of watching a monarch butterfly caterpillar shed its white, yellow and black skin in order to form this beautiful jade-green crysalis. The power of that silent but profound change has stayed with me.
Now we get to watch it again. Spiky (so named for the colorful spiked protuberances all over his body) is actually a Cecropia moth caterpillar, the largest moth in North America. You can see him moving inside his cocoon, spinning and laying down silk. I sometimes envy creatures who are so whole within their lives. As I watch this perfect critter move toward its next stage, I find myself wondering if this is death for the caterpillar or birth for the moth.
Or both?
And how are we suspended between those poles?
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