The Great Caterpillar Massacre Part 2 of 2

I waited.  She continued mindlessly weeding, while I stared at the monstrous creature blocking my way.  Well, I stared.  He just looked off into space acting like he had every right in the world to be exactly where he was . . . on my sidewalk.  I pedaled closer.

            “Mama,” I called imperiously, “he’s not moving.”  Queens should be obeyed.  My mother’s belly was as round as Santa’s, my sister due to be born soon, but I couldn’t at that moment appreciate that she was not rushing over to remove this scary intruder from my path.

            “Janny, just be patient.  He’ll move.”  She seemed preoccupied, perhaps a bit tired.

            I went back to watching.  I ducked my head down and peered under the handlebars.  He looked the other way and seemed to settle in for a midsummer’s nap.

            This was rank insubordination.  As an adult I read an article by Thomas Merritt, University of Florida, who clocked a caterpillar, Apantesis villala, moving at 3.13 mph across the top of a table so I know now that they are capable of great speed when they have someplace to go.  I didn’t have this piece of scientific trivia with me at the age of two but I knew that that caterpillar had moved quickly enough to get into the middle of my sidewalk while I had turned it around near the porch… and there he stayed just taunting me to get past him.

“Mommm,” I hollered for the third time. 

Not getting an immediate answer, I felt that I would have to take matters into my own hands.  I crept ever closer, pressing the pedal with my right foot.  Two year olds don’t generally know right from left, especially me.  I grew up ambidextrous and it’s still a challenge.  It was my right foot, however, because it was the one nearest the garage and I remember I was facing toward Grandma’s.

            Closer and closer, I moved.  The caterpillar held his own, feigning indifference, refusing to budge.  I could stand it no longer. 

            I pressed down hard and shot off down the walkway. 

            CRUNCH!  

            I heard the crack and splat as I leapt forward on my red tricycle.  I would be obeyed.  No caterpillar would get the best of me, I thought.

            “He wouldn’t move,” I hollered triumphantly over my shoulder, the words drifting off toward my mother.  Do I remember feeling remorse over what I had just done?  A twinge perhaps.  Mom was perhaps a bit disappointed in me or at least in my actions.  I never really knew what she thought.

I tucked the memory away as children do and thought no more about it.  When I was seven or eight and lived in a sub-division in Anaheim across from an orange grove that Disney would one day make famous, I remember being trapped in a garage by a horrible, fat, hairless, lime-green caterpillar, with a bright blood-red horn at either end.  The thought of stepping past the doorway onto the sidewalk into the back yard was more than I could handle.  Once again mom refused to move this monster so I stayed inside on a perfectly beautiful, sunny day.  Returning later, the horned horror had finally lost patience in waiting to way lay me and had moved on so I could once again play outside unmolested.

Then in my early thirties, my own beautiful son, Billy, brought me a caterpillar.  Good grief!  He had it on his finger and was coming across the living room floor towards me as I edged toward escape through the kitchen.  It was the reincarnation of my past, black and orange with spiky hair.  Although I hadn’t made the full connection yet, my stomach was knotting and my breath was becoming shallow.

“Mama, look what I found.”  His face was actually glowing with excitement.  How could I get out of this one gracefully without transferring my horror to this innocent little boy? 

“Mmmm, great.  That’s great, honey.  Now take him outside.”

“But look at him, mama.”

I am positive that caterpillar chuckled at my discomfort.

“Take him outside.”  Did my voice quiver?  I’m not sure but my impending hysteria did not stop Billy.  He kept coming closer.  His hand outstretched.  

My husband finally noticed that I was on the very edge of I’m not sure what.  He said casually to our firstborn, placing his hands on Billy’s shoulders to turn him away from me, “Okay, son, mama’s seen your caterpillar.  Now let’s take it outside.  Mama’s not particularly fond of bugs.”

As he steered Billy with his new found treasure out the front door and into the yard, I realized that I had stopped breathing.  Later that day, I began to wonder what it was that had caused this panic attack.  I knew that I didn’t particularly like caterpillars; they ate my plants, snuck up on a person unawares, appeared in the most inopportune places, and were just . . . yucky!

It was then or more likely, shortly thereafter that I remembered what I had done at two.  It was only a caterpillar I reasoned but . . . the guilt and, yes, the shame was there, intact after all those years.  Why had I killed that caterpillar?  Well, ‘It was in my way,’ sounded like such a foolish reason in the light of adulthood.  ‘I was only two’  sounds rediculous.  I knew what I was doing even then.  I remembered going purposely forward.  I remember the decision to press down on the pedal, and I had carried the guilt of murder with me for nearly thirty years. 

Some say that two years olds don’t remember, that they can’t understand.  Just what don’t they understand, I ask?  They understand plenty as they explore and learn to share their world and discover their place in it. 

I still don’t much care for caterpillars.  They are, after all, such creepy, crawly, little beasties.  But they thankfully no longer make the hair on my neck rise.  I generally ignore them or go inside until they leave.  I’ve made peace with nature in that if they stay outside my home they are left to munch in silence but if they come inside, ah well, they were warned.  I give no quarter to mosquitoes, however, but then that’s a whole different story.

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