I’m standing in my front yard, holding the noodle strainer over the bushes in front of my living room window. I’ve found a long, flat piece of bark, and am using that to gently, gently prod the moth along.
“Come on, buddy,” I mutter as I nudge him. Her? The moth is beautiful, white with black spots, but it’s got a snub-nosed head and an orange striped thorax beneath the spotted wings and looks almost aggressive, so … “him.”
On the third careful push, the moth gets moving, and starts walking along the inside of the sieve. I rotate the bowl, quickly, and tilt it, trying to get the moth to move to the lip, and to the leaves beyond.
This moment has been over six weeks in the making. It was April 14 when I moved the empty mulch bag and found the remarkable caterpillar underneath. I had never seen anything like it -- striped smooth red alternating with prickly black -- and I scooped the caterpillar up, took it inside, and made it a little home in a glass vase. I added some leaves and set it on the kitchen table.
I didn’t intend to keep the caterpillar forever, just long enough to identify what kind of butterfly it was going to be. But once I looked up a caterpillar guide online, it was beautiful! A Giant Leopard Moth! No way was I going to let it go! I had to see it through its whole metamorphosis.
Of course, I’ve never cared for a caterpillar before, and couldn’t find much information on how to take care of it. So I guessed. I replaced varied dead leaves with varied fresh leaves very few days. I dripped in a little bit of water.
And I disregarded my friends’ and family’s skepticism. People would walk into the kitchen, peer inside the unusual centerpiece, and shrug. My son and husband looked at each other, eyebrows raised, and silently agreed, “Crazy Mom,” more than once.
Things did not improve as the weeks went on. “Look! It formed its chrysalis!” I exclaimed one day. But the casual observer couldn’t see the chrysalis by looking into the vase; only I saw it, by dumping the whole matted clump into my hand and gently peeling apart stuck-together leaves.
After finding the chrysalis, I changed my tactics. I left it alone, I stopped replacing leaves, kept dripping in water. The old leaves turned brown and droopy. Fuzzy white mold grew along one side.
I believed the caterpillar was dead. Everyone believed the caterpillar was dead. It had to be, right? No signs of life, for almost four weeks. Mold. Brown leaves. I was just days away from dumping the whole mess out on the lawn, when today, I came home, happened to glance in the vase, and, “Oh!” There he was! Pure white, with black spots, gripping the inside of the vase.
I danced around the kitchen, thrilled to see the moth. Thrilled that I hadn’t killed him. Thrilled by his beauty.
And now, outside, the moth, on the lip of the strainer, finds the leaves, reaches out, crawls down, follows the branch, and in an instant disappears from view. I spread the branches, peek down, and try to catch a last glimpse.
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