Saturday, August 17, 2013

Scary Caterpillars


This year I have to see lots of caterpillars at my small back yard that gives me opportunity to grow my own vegetables, if only I know how to grow them. It seems that I am allergic to all kind of bugs that wriggles in the garden, and most of all its caterpillars. Of course, it has power to scare girls, girls of all kind bold or weak; agreed there will always be some with exception. What's the power with caterpillars, which has such strength to terrorize us with its tiny entity ?

However, this season I found myself facing and getting rid of many sizes of caterpillars  from the green boundary wall of mine, which size otherwise could have frozen me to death. What to do, they were in front of my nose, as my kitchen garden is not so big to ignore them entirely wriggling on any side of small area. This small creature do have full power to make or break small to big tree also. It chews up the new plant long before it can get big and it also can the big tree.

I know how big power caterpillars possess with them to scare us. Honestly speaking terrorize us not scare. Even smallest caterpillar with a couple of millimeter length do have power to send us in frenzy  screaming or freeze our all senses if it happen to be in our body, until someone ‘brave’ comes to rescue us from its scary ‘grip’. It might make some guys laugh but the truth is they are scary with its all size, ask any girls you know the answer. Worse, if you are as sensitive as me the look of it will send you in an allergic reaction, with big rashes.


I think this small creature do have power to scare us with its look with the way it walks, as soon as we enter in the garden to steal this or that. Is caterpillar is natures way to keep children out from the garden ? may be yes ! but sometimes its more than just garden protector; its worse than that !

I do remember one season in Bal Mandir when caterpillar terrorized everyone not just girls of all age. I was too young to remember my age, but one thing is sure that I was under ten years of old at that time.

There was a pear tree just outside the gate of our kitchen garden or we also used to call it statue yard. This gate lead us to the big round lawn that is surrounded by trees from all area. This is a lawn which can be seen just when you enter the main gate. We also used to use this same road to go to school. It was the main entrance to enter inside the main building of Bal Mandir and this was open for children and staff only.

One season caterpillars which color was black and it had some red color also in its body, that  was a little more than an inch long; crawled back-to-back made a long row, two in every row side by side traveling from top-to-bottom of the pear tree. As if that was not enough, it also had made a big round circle nearby the tree again two in each side. Because it have covered the big  area, it came on the road that lead all the children to school. All those tiny creature was slowly chewing up that big tree. Its different that I did not knew about this at that time.

Slowly as the number of caterpillar grew and grew by every passing days, every time somebody crossed that road some of it started falling on the head of children and they started giving them the allergic reaction. We were terrorized by this small creature to the max, ultimately, we started avoiding that road to go to school and used the way normally allotted for office staff of NCO only. If we use the office road to go to school, its would have been really disturbing to the office staff, of course due to the big number of children than any other reason.

I guess only after that they must have ordered the men of Bal Mandir to chop off the tree that was being chewed up by those small creature. It seemed that was the only way to  get rid from those caterpillars, so that we could walk freely, without the fear of those tiny scary creature whenever we go to school.


That season, that fear, that talk of it still do have power to give me a 
goosebumps in my body. I know that was not the biggest size of the caterpillar I have seen yet, as other girls always used to come with a story of seeing a bigger size caterpillar, which gave us more  goosebumps with their life like story telling skill and we screamed on top of our lungs and squirmed with the sight of it seeing it in our mind, which I guess only we girls can understand, we are more sensitive than boys.

Yeah, I know it only makes guys roll their eyes. Its so hard to believe that guys are so cynical about the terror of caterpillars we feel. But hey who needs their approval before we scream ? because the scream is already out !

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