Caterpillars Turned...Dragons?

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. In fact, the dragon population came to be because of caterpillars. Yes, caterpillars. I bought some caterpillars off the internet as a cool science teaching moment for my children and we set them up in a nice little corner in our backyard. After a few days, I noticed smoke coming out of the set up, but the source unknown.

“Mom! There’s smoke again!” Lilith, my seven year old, yells from the yard, “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

I chuckle as I walk towards her with my three year old on my hip and whisper softly to him, “My knowledge goes as far as what the instructions tell me to do,” I laugh some more. “Honey, if I can raise three children, I can keep some caterpillars.”

“You would think so”, Lilith retorts.

Lilith loves the outdoors, nature, and showing love. She is also feisty, confident, and compassionate. I admire her assertiveness, courage, and self assured attitude. I knew she would be fascinated with the caterpillars' metamorphosis.

By the time I reached their habitat, there was a small fog being omitted from all the open spaces.

“I mean, the caterpillars don’t seem agitated or sick”, I placed my 3 year old down in the grass to take a closer look inside. We have eight caterpillars ranging in many different colors. They are relatively the same size and they seem to get along.

“Mom, you think one of the caterpillars is smoking?”

“You think we have Absalom?”

“Ab-sa-lom?” Lilith’s face goes a little crooked as she attempts to repeat the name and I smile. I will have her watch Alice in Wonderland later. We are both still staring inside the habitat and simultaneously notice,

“It's a caterpillar smoking,” I whisper shockingly. “There is literally smoke coming out of this beautiful green caterpillar with yellow dots.”

“I told you”

I give Lilith a playful side eye then I grab her up quickly, spin her around and we both fill the yard with laughter while the caterpillar smokes and her brother plays.

Two weeks pass and the caterpillars have formed their cocoon. The smoking caterpillar’s cocoon stood out from the rest. It was darker, rougher, and larger. This particular day as Lilith and I were doing our daily stare, I placed my hand upon the glass where the smoking caterpillar’s cocoon hung and pulled it back just as quickly.

That was hot, I thought. My curiosity was peaking with these caterpillars, especially Smokey’s. I became just as excited for the upcoming days as they should be shedding any time now.

Just as expected, within three days we had some beautiful butterflies, but Smokey was still snuggled in their cocoon. We waited patiently.

It wasn’t until four days later that Smokey started to show signs of emerging. It was the last cocoon to open and the last butterfly in the habitat; the rest have flown the coop. Then Smokey’s cocoon did something very unconventional for a cocoon; it burst into a small flame, disintegrating into the air leaving an exposed butterfly.

A butterfly we thought…

Lilith and I watched frozen in awe and anticipation. The wings slowly began to open and our mouths opened with them. We were so surprised at the final reveal when we witnessed what we thought was going to be a butterfly. It shook off the remaining ash off its body and cautiously lowered itself to stand on its legs and observe the environment it was in.

Lilith manges to let out a whisper to say, “Mommy is that a…a…”

“A dragon, baby? Yes. Yes, it is a dragon.”

And just like that Smokey the dragon hatched from a caterpillar cocoon catapults this climax even higher as the dragon says,

“Hi Lilith.”

End of Chapter One