Sarsaparilla Alphabet #10

J - JAR

He was just in the middle of eating. No one should be taken away while they're eating. Nor should they be placed into a glass container. But this is the situation that the caterpillar found himself in.

There are some parasites that find their ways inside caterpillars, usually by laying their eggs inside the thing's head. Once the young are able to, they seize control of the caterpillar's head and turn it into a cute, little zombie. While human zombies are inexplicably drawn to brains, the caterpillar zombie is drawn to the top of a plant, where it can be seen in plain sight. This, of course, provides a wonderfully easy dinner for a bird, which is where the parasite find itself next. Feeding off the bird, it eventually reaches maturity around the same time that it finds itself outside of the bird. This, however, was not as horrible as what our caterpillar was experiencing.

He found that he wasn't alone. There was a stick, too. Oh, and some leaves from a nearby oak tree. He didn't really like oak leaves. He preferred maple.

And then, the sun disappeared from the sky, yet it was still oddly bright where the caterpillar was. It sounded as if God was replacing a lightbulb. The caterpillar was then thrust upward like a rocket and he smacked against the hard sides of his new home. Out of fatigued eyes he saw a great, blurred figure. "If this is God, I wish He weren't so hard to see," thought the squishy thing. He hadn't decided whether he liked God or not. He didn't know whether he liked his new home or his new friends, either.

Then came a muffled shout, and the world shook and was slammed down. Things were quiet, but it was an unstill quiet, where the caterpillar was granted a second to become absolutely terrified. And then the great Thing blocking the sun bent with a great WHUMP. The three amigos were thrown around by it, and again by another. The sun once again shined down, but only bleakly. This was rectified when another series of WHUMPs ensued. And then, they heard the voice of God.

"See, he's got everything a bug needs... food, air, light, and a stick... y'know, for... fun. Do caterpillars eat sticks? I know they eat leaves, but maybe he'd like a stick, too."

And then they moved to a dusty room. Unlike his home, this one was dark, the air was choking, and it was dry. Very dry. Apparently the caterpillar, the stick, and the leaves (which weren't all that tasty) had to condense the dusty, dry air themselves.

And so things went like this for a few days. The caterpillar even managed to climb up the stick before it slipped and he fell to the floor. He contemplated inventing caterpillar origami. But the biggest problem for him was not how to create interesting shapes out of leaves, but surviving. He was hungry and thirsty, but God never showed up. He'd come into the same room, but he never acknowledged the jar, nevermind what was inside of it. On the one occassion that he did, he wondered aloud when the caterpillar would change into a butterfly. He dreamed of the miracle of life that would occur in his room, nay, in HIS jar! He would be capable of seeing the stuff of elementary school science textbooks in real life, and then, one day, he would let the butterfly go and its wonderous colors would shimmer in the sunlight as it flitted across the sky.

The next day, he discovered that his caterpillar had died. What he didn't discover, however, was that this particular species of caterpillar never turned into butterflies.