His New Friend

Little Matthew was 5 years old and loved going outside, exploring the garden behind his house that to his perspective appeared enormous. It was there that he found it. He had never seen one before and maybe that’s why it caught his attention as it chewed on his mother’s roses. It looked so pure…so mystical…so green. To you and me it would have looked like a regular old green caterpillar and the truth is, it was. But too little Matthew it was something, new some kind of a mystery.

Soon enough he had ran back to his house, found a glass jar, and had put the caterpillar in the jar with some leaves and a rose for it to chew on. It was then that his mother, wondering what he was doing decided to go check on him. She found him lying on the ground staring at the glass jar as if expecting something mystical to happen at any moment. She picked up the jar, not knowing that there was a caterpillar in it and was going to throw it away when little Matthew cried out in a relentless effort to save his newly acquired friend. And of course his mother wondering why he was crying looked down at the jar and saw it. The green caterpillar that was on one of the leaves as if nothing was happening around it. She explained to him that she needed to put a lid on the jar and poke holes in the lid so the caterpillar could breath and so that it couldn’t get out. Little Matthew didn’t care what she did to the jar of course all he wanted was to be able to keep his new friend.

For weeks after that little Matthew would spend hours on end staring…watching…hoping that his caterpillar would do something impressive, but it didn’t. It simply chewed on the leaves and got bigger and fatter. Little Matthew was not amused no more and went looking for other things that might do something. That same day his father came home with a new pet for his son…a little puppy. This of course thrilled little Matthew and made him forget entirely of the caterpillar for days. Until one day he heard a loud crash in his room and wondered what it was.

As he stepped in the room he immediately knew what had happened. His puppy had run into the table in his room knocking over the glass jar. He looked everywhere but could not find the caterpillar…he wondered if his puppy had ate it. Little Matthew looked behind his dresser…under his bed…it was nowhere. The only thing different in his room was a flying little critter that kept bothering him as he tried to find his old friend.

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