An Evil to Me is Cute to Others

As spring starts, new beginnings are everywhere. That could be not only as new life, but as transformations as well. One of these new beginnings can also be a transformation as well. I know many little children who love Caterpillars. When I was younger, my best friend and I would catch them at recess and play with them, put them on other people and even put them in our pockets to try and keep them as pets. My brother and I used to do something similar at home with Caterpillars and Worms. We would collect them in plastic containers and attempt to keep them as pets. Normally they died from being cooked inside the container because we left them outside in the sun; which, when I think back on it, was rather morbid and sad.

Now, what does Caterpillars have to do with anything? Well, today when I went out for a walk with my dog and a Caterpillar dropped down in front of me. I screamed and tried to get as far away from it as possible to get around it. I have a very strange fear of Caterpillars. Unfortunately, I cannot pinpoint when exactly I became so terrified by them. The only possible time I can think of was the day a Caterpillar dropped onto my arm one day while I was at the park. It caught me off guard, but it didn’t freak me out. I tried to pull it off, but it was stuck to my arm. I really had to dig my finger under it to pull it off my arm, which was rather difficult because they seem to have some weird suction ability. When I finally got it off my arm, it wrapped around my finger and then proceeded to climb up and around my finger to my hand. During this I flung my hand around as if I was shaking a Polaroid picture and yet it still would not get off of me. What finally did it was scraping my hand against a picnic table. Though this seems to be an event that could begin my fear, it wasn’t. The reason I know this, is because I remember pulling Caterpillars off of one of the daycare kids my mom used to watch. He had been poking one of the nests with a stick and it exploded all over him. It was actually really amusing, but I had no problem helping him.

The Caterpillar is my villain, and yet I cannot figure out when we became such since we were originally the best of friends.