Caterpillar

I was watching a movie a couple of nights ago and there was a caterpillar in one scene. It was in the foreground, crawling along a branch and I had a total body reaction to seeing it.

You see, I had completely forgotten that caterpillars exist. Living in the city, you just don't see them. I grew up in the burbs and caterpillars were everywhere. I have a picture of me at 5 years old, cupping one in my hands. I remember walking to school in the mornings and collecting them in empty coffee tins. We'd add grass and twigs and leaves and hope that they would be happy in their new home.

I started to think about city life and what other things are different about living away from the suburbs. Here's what I came up with;

In the city we don't have crickets chirping or frogs croaking. We have less spiders and they are much smaller than their suburban cousins. We have less lawn mowers mowing and by the time you notice them, they are quiet, since lawns here are so tiny. Instead, we have the sound of shopping carts being pushed down the lanes and alleys by the homeless people. I also see skunks on a regular basis which I don't think I ever saw in the suburbs.

As I write this, I can actually very faintly hear a lawn mower in the distance. I can hear a seagull cawing and someone coughing. Later this afternoon my downstairs neighbour will practice his trumpet and I will be grateful that he is kind of good at it.

The movie I was watching was Into The Wild and the caterpillar was only in frame for a second or two but in that short time, I realized that life in the city is very different than life in the suburbs in more ways than I generally think. I felt nostalgic for simpler times, for the days when caterpillars were just a part of my everyday life.

By the next morning, I had forgotten my nostalgia and was busy living my city life again. I came home from having breakfast with girlfriends and as I put my key in the door, I glanced to the left and there on the wall beside me was a fuzzy caterpillar. I stopped short and stared at it in awe. I gave it a little pet and thanked it for being there.

Some might say that because caterpillars were on my mind that I was more likely to notice one in my vicinity but I like to think of it as a gift from God. A fuzzy, little, brown and yellow gift from God.