OUR VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLARS

About 2 hours before a recent Shabbos, my 3 year old daughter and I watered the container garden in the back of our apartment building. Alternating waves of heat and rain here in Southern California had stimulated new growth on our tomato and cucumber plants. As we were counting new tomatoes, I noticed the tell-tale nibbles of caterpillars on the leaves.

“Ahuva,” I said, “we need to find those pests!” I planned to destroy the critters before they could ruin my tomatoes. After examining the first plant with no luck, we turned to the second plant.

“Ahh!” I shrieked.

Ahuva gasped. “Ima, what is that!?!”

It was a very large, and very hungry caterpillar—in fact, the largest one I’d ever seen not behind glass at a zoo or in a museum. Green, with stripes.

We ran back in the house and fetched the rest of the family to gawk. My eldest son’s visiting friend remarked, “You’re giving me nightmares!” while Ahuva cried, “Yuck!”

On the other hand, my younger son started gently petting the creature and trying to lure it onto his finger. “It’ll turn into a butterfly soon, won’t it, Ima?” he said. “Just like in the book!”

Immediately, our kids went from “Eew” to “Oooh” once my 5 year old made his point. “We have to keep him!” they cried. My husband and I had both raised moths and butterflies in our respective classrooms in the past, so this wasn’t such a stretch. I found some old Tupperware, and my husband cut some holes in the lid. We lined the whole thing with lots and lots of leaves from the lower branches of our tomato plants. Upon further scrutiny, we found four more, smaller, inch-worm-sized caterpillars and tossed them in the container, too.

That evening, the family entertained themselves largely by watching the caterpillar crew squirming around their Tupperware home. Not very Shabbosdik, but better than chasing each other around the Shabbos table or beating each other up, so I didn’t complain.

The next morning, we discovered that our little critters had a very big appetite. Or, rather, the larger, striped caterpillar had a huge appetite, while the others just nibbled the leaves around the edges. In fact, Gordo (for so I had dubbed him) had eaten almost all the leaves we’d slipped in the box, and there were 12 more hours left of Shabbos. Oops. He was pooping everywhere, too, and rolling on top of his smaller roommates.

It’s funny how we romanticize these animals. This supposedly cute caterpillar was acting not so cutely. Still, my entire family seemed in thrall to its charm. Not just my family—we had to ask our rav a shyla about feeding it on Shabbos (“Sure! It’s your pet!” “Even if only since two hours before Shabbos?” “Yes!”). After our rav answered, he asked if he could see the butterfly when it finally emerged. Even he was captivated by the caterpillars’ legend of transformation and beauty.

Since they were officially our pets, we fed the little critters tomato slices and the like over Shabbos. My husband was machpid to feed them before he sat down to his own seudah.

After Shabbos, we decided to do an internet search about what to expect. We wanted to know what species they were, how long would they live, and so on.

The results were not so pleasant. The four little critters were mostly harmless, and would eventually turn into small, not very colorful butterflies or moths.

But Gordo was another story. He was a tobacco hornworm, relative of the tomato hornworm (you can only distinguish them by the pattern of their stripes). This is a notorious home garden pest, capable of stripping an entire plant free of leaves in just a day or two. And no glamorous cocoon would result after a couple of weeks, either. Hornworms hide their pupas underground, unseen by us, and wait several months to mature. In springtime—if uneaten by raccoons, rats, or opossums—they emerge as hummingbird-size brown butterflies. Almost all the articles I read about these pests explained the best thing to do with them was kill them. (Many explained just how!)

This was more than we’d bargained for. What were we going to do with our “pets”? And how would my husband and I break the news to our children, who were waiting for the beautiful butterflies they’d always fantasized about?

If we released the hornworm, it could not only rampage our garden, but those of the neighbors, as well. And if we killed Gordo…well, what kind of lesson did that teach the kids?

My husband and children finally decided to release the tobacco hornworm in a nearby wetlands area. We figured that even if it didn’t make it to the pupa stage and beyond, it would be eaten by the numerous wild birds there. The articles we read remarked this as a frequent end to their lives anyhow.

On the other hand, we kept the four small caterpillars. Three quickly made cocoons and emerged as little brown moths. When it came time to release them, I let Ahuva do the honors. We’re still waiting on the last cocoon.

Yesterday, Ahuva, her little sister, and I sat down to read The Very Hungry Caterpillar. She was still captivated by the story, but I couldn’t help but think about how much less glamorous our real-life caterpillar adventure had been.