I Saved A Caterpillar

This is a story about how I saved a caterpillar. It could also have been titled "I Cut My Toenails", but that didn't resonate with me.

It was after lunch, a small delightful affair with my dear Dennesa and her two colleagues (that is another story in itself). I was there at my desk, replying emails and just chugging through the administration of a church, when a feeling hit me. A tiresome, frustrating feeling of suffocation. There was nothing wrong with me, but yet there I was, feeling increasingly irritated with nothing and yet everything. Breathing almost became difficult and my chest felt a weight of invisible presence. No, it was not anything spiritual, this annoyance just comes every now and again and makes me frustrated.

I knew that in that mood, I could barely do work. Afternoons have been spent doing nothing while waiting for "the frustration of nothing" to pass. Today, I decided that perhaps a breath of fresh air might help, and so I picked up my nail clippers, and left the office for an empty (and quiet) classroom. Why the nail clippers? To cut my toenails of course. They were long. And sharp.

I went to classroom #03-03, because it was far from the office, had a nice view (when the curtains are drawn and the door open), and the rainy day meant a cool breeze. It was also nicely private. Off went my shoes and socks, and to my dismay, the floor was damp from the rain. After retreating a few steps from the open door, I sat down, and began my mani-pedi.

That's when I saw it. Somewhere between my left big toe and its lanky neighbour, my eyes strayed to a green, wriggling, thing, on the blue floor. A tiny caterpillar. No more than the size of that very last bit of noodle from the wan-ton noodles stall. A cm or two? Tiny little fella.

My first thought was: "How did you get here?" There was nothing edible for its little equivalent of miles. Then it struck me that the only reason it was there, was because of me.

And then came the epiphany.

Watching its little self struggle in a vast sea of hard laminate, I realised I was now either its saviour, or its death. Not doing anything would mean its eventual demise, starvation or thirst or its bug-equivalents would come unless it could crawl a zillion millilitres to the nearest plant (ground floor, near the side door). Or it would be squashed when aunty Fatijah came in to sweep the room. Perhaps squashing it now would be doing it a favour - ending its misery with a (protected) act-of-god-finger.

Or I could give it hope, by bringing it down 3 floors and leaving it to its devices in a natural world. It could still die, but hey, I wouldn't have to live with the tiny wiggly weight of its death on my conscience.

I wondered if that was what it was like to hold life and death in my hands. Undoubtedly a bug's life is nothing compared to a living, breathing person, but really, isn't that the sense of scope that Jesus had when He decided to be born as us just so He could die and save us? (And that's still not a fair comparison. I didn't create the lil emerald bugger for one. And God's really much bigger in scale.)I also wondered about hope. The hope I had for it (eat and live and become a butterfly oh tiny one!); the instinctive "hope" it had to survive and eat and live and become a butterfly (actually now that I think about it I'm not even sure it would become a butterfly. Maybe just a gross creepy crawly). Hope, that simply put, was just a chance, that it would live longer than just this afternoon. We all need that, don't we?

My mind made up, I found a piece of paper, used half of it to wrap my finger/toe clippings in, and the other to move the caterpillar with. Getting it onto the paper was a little tough; I came close to inflicting severe trauma on it's little body then. Oh and boy was it freaked out. It tried to jump off the paper a couple of times, until it finally gave up and curled into a tiny green doughnut.

Carefully, I brought it down to plants next to church. It was raining so I figured a nice dry spot under the entrance to the carpark would be a good spot. Okay maybe I was just paranoid that it would drown in the rain. (Seriously!) Even as I tipped it out, lil green sprang out and landed on the earth next to the plant, landing on a brown dried leaf. Right. So much for helping you properly you darn bug.

And then it raised its head, as if looking around to see its salvation for the first time. I stayed a second, and then went back to the office.