Victoria's Secret

 Thought For The Day

Once upon a time there was a chubby, black, white, orange and yellow, striped, caterpillar, named Victoria. Victoria had a very pleasing smile and walked very gracefully for someone who had twenty-eight legs. She climbed in and about the milkweed bushes of her neighborhood every day, careful not to wander too far from home. Although she lived in a beautiful, open field, Victoria was not very happy. She was not happy because all of the other creatures in the garden called her pudgy and said she looked like a neon sign with legs.

Now, it is true that Victoria had a pleasant roundness of features, but that seemed only natural for a caterpillar with such an enormous appetite. She simply felt hungry all the time. No matter what she ate the next leaf she came across looked even more tantalizing than the one she had just finished eating.

So Victoria began to hide from the others in the garden. She would carefully look around to find a place to munch on leaves all by herself, until one day when she began to feel very, very tired. Victoria needed sleep. She began to look around for a quiet spot that would be safe and snug for a nap. Her curiously huge appetite had gone away. She began to feel groggy and disoriented. It became a great problem to figure out which foot she should start with. That had never been a problem before.

 It was early in the morning when she began her hunt for the quiet place and now it was growing dark. She felt like she could not take another step when suddenly, she tripped on a new leaf shoot and would have fallen to the ground but caught herself with her twenty-seventh foot. "Whew !", she gasped, not even being able to imagine what might have happened if she had missed the stalk. Carefully and slowly she worked her twenty-eighth foot into position to hold on to the branch. "Gotcha", she whispered, and fell fast asleep.

She awoke a few hours later with a feeling unlike any she had felt before. A little voice inside her was saying, "Look like a leaf." Victoria was very confused by this little voice. But, she heard it again. "Look like a leaf." Now Victoria was a pretty smart caterpillar, as caterpillars go and she was more than a little put off by this curious little voice telling her to look like a leaf. She felt even more ridiculous when she heard her voice saying, "Why should I look like a leaf?", and her chubby little cheeks began to glow red with embarrassment for talking back to an imaginary voice.

It was just at that moment that a very curious thing indeed happened to Victoria. A lovely silken thread appeared before her that shined with all of the colors of the rainbow through the light of the very full moon. And without knowing why, Victoria began to wrap herself in between the folds of a leaf with this wonderful silken thread until she did indeed look like a leaf.

Things in the garden continued to bloom and grow. Days turned to weeks and  finally one sun-streaked day Victoria woke up. "Oh my, she yawned. "Where am I?" She felt very cramped and crowded in this dark place. So She began to struggle to get out. She wiggled and she wriggled. She bent and stretched. She oohed and she ahhhhed until she saw a tiny splinter of light. That encouraged her to try even harder until she saw the full light of the sun.

 It was so beautiful. The sun, the flowers and the leaves on the trees were full and rich in colors. But Victoria felt wet and weak. She felt like she needed to stretch and stretch and stretch and so she did. It was then that another strange and wonderful thing began to unfold, her wings. She stretched and straightened and stretched and straightened until every part was straight and flat. The cool breeze felt terrific and then she noticed something incredible. Her wings were large and graceful with swirls of orange and black and white. They were beautiful, she was beautiful and she wasn't fat any more she was light and graceful.

Without any warning her foot lost hold on the limb to which she had so carefully attached herself and she began to fall. She began to struggle and in her struggle waved her wings frantically only to find that she could fly. What a happy day. She was beautiful and she could fly. And so, she did, because you see, Victoria had become a Monarch Butterfly.

Her heart was full and she was excited about her new wings and the lightness of being that she felt. She wanted to fly and fly and fly, but that is another story.


Herb Ratliff, December 29, 2011, All Rights Reserved