The Secret Caterpillar

Let me tell you a story. This story is not a very long story. Nor is it a short one. It is a sort of mediumy slightly longish possibly shorter than you think story about a caterpillar.  But why would you tell me a story about a caterpillar you ask? Well it’s not a story about just any caterpillar. It is a story about a secret caterpillar. But why is it a ‘secret caterpillar’ you ask? Why isn’t it a normal every day non secret possibly green caterpillar with fur you ask?  Well that’s because no one has ever told anyone a story about a secret caterpillar before. The reason being they are very, very, very secret and no one even knows what they look like! No one except me that is… because I am the only person in the whole wide world who has ever seen a secret caterpillar! It’s true I tell you! I am most certainly not lying. Why would I lie to you?

It all started one morning or maybe it was afternoon, or was it evening? I’m getting forgetful in my old age… but I am quite sure it was not so long ago that I was sitting in my granny’s garden watching her flowers grow. As you all know, flowers when they want to grow, take their own sweet time doing it. They sit there in their buds, not really doing much apart from flirting half heartedly with a passing bee and enjoying the sun on their faces, or in this case, the sun on their bums ( am I allowed to say bums I wonder?) but wait… I’m going off my point… I tend to ramble a bit in my old age. I was sitting quite still, watching the flowers grow, when I heard a slight scuffle, scuffle, dig, dig, snarff, dig, dig, snarff… under my grannies fattest leafiest plant… at first I thought it was the flowers giggling at an earthworm passing  wind deep underground… But no, the flowers were quiet and dozing in the sun.

So I decided to sit there and be still and quiet. I was going to be the kind of quiet that a mouse is when the cat is sitting by his door. As quiet as a little girl who is trying to fall asleep and hears the monster under her bed snore. I was going to be as still as every lost thing is when someone searching for it is near. I was going to be as still as a frog, waiting on a fly to fly past his nose.  I sat there, not moving and hardly breathing and trying hard to listen and concentrate, while the sun was warm the birds were too tired to yell… and the whole world was silent, holding its breath.

Then suddenly, oh so carefully, I saw a teeny tiny face poke carefully around the fattest root of the fattest leafiest plant in my grannies garden. I blinked and he was gone and I blinked again and he was back. A secret caterpillar! The first of his kind to ever be seen by a person, and that person was me! What is that you say? It couldn’t possibly be so? But it is true; I swear it on the slime of the snails, and the wag in my dog’s tails, the song in the breeze and a cat’s sneeze. There he was, with his furry little face, his 10 feet and 6 arms, his long yellowy orangey blue green body, squinting at me through caterpillar glasses. He was as surprised to see me, as I was to see him. I did tell you, they were very, very, secret so it was not a great big surprise that he had never seen a creature quite like me before.

We stared at each other, him with his black button caterpillar eyes through caterpillar glasses, me with my big brown girl eyes thorough the wind and the air. He looked at me up and down and seemed sad that I had only two hands and two legs. He seemed to think it was unfair that he had so many arms and legs when I had only two of each. He looked some more, and then squeaked what I took to be a caterpillar ‘Hello!’ so I waved and smiled because  I didn’t want to scare him with a loud booming girl ‘hello’. It was also very sad to know… sadder than a lost friend, sadder than a closed door, sadder even than a broken heart that I didn’t speak him and he didn’t speak me. He said something more in his small caterpillar voice and I smiled and nodded and he seemed pleased.

So we sat there, the secret caterpillar and I. He, munching quietly on the fattest leaf of the fattest plant in my granny’s garden, and me letting him do just that. It was a quiet day, a good day for dreams. A day when the bees took a nap and the medicine went down with no spoon of sugar. It was a long day, a warm day, a day for finding what is lost and losing what is found. Such days are rare and come along once in a cheese green moon, such are the days of the secret caterpillar. He left after his meal and walked down the plant, putting one caterpillar foot in front of the other. He looked back once nodding his furry face in the thoughtful way that caterpillars have, as he waved his third favorite arm at me. Then he was gone, like he never was there, like he was a dream, a memory of a story and a whisper in the wind.

I probably fell asleep you say? It was a dream you say? Just a story to make children laugh and adults smile and nod wisely you say? Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. It happened a long, long, time ago, or a short, short, time ago. I am old, forgive me, and forgetful.  And the days of the green cheese moon don’t come often.  My mind goes on its own long walks, and sometimes I wonder if I remember things right. I wonder if the colour of loneliness is purple and the colour of happiness is a bright dazzling blue. I wonder where lost friends go to be found. I wonder how to mend something that I don’t know how I broke. I wonder most of all if I am a girl with a memory and a story of a secret caterpillar, and if somewhere, somehow, I am the counter creature of a secret caterpillar with a memory and a story of a girl.

Pish you say? Apple tosh, tweezle and piffle for good measure? There’s no such thing as a secret caterpillar you say? It’s all stiff and nonsense, fairy stories and cobwebs in the sun?  Ah… but I know a secret caterpillar you see, and the secret caterpillar? He knows me!